


vignettes of domesticity

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/M, Fluff, No murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3952915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“All he has in his fridge is leftover Chinese takeout and beer. Laurel sighs. She’s never seen anyone less equipped for parenthood than Frank Delfino.” </p><p>Or, Frank suddenly finds himself responsible for a baby. Laurel is there to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Something is up with Frank. Like, seriously up.

That’s the general consensus amongst the Keating Five, and Laurel agrees.

He’d been acting funny at work on Tuesday, and called in sick on Wednesday – which Bonnie seemed to think was strange, because, according to her, Frank hasn’t taken a sick day in years. He’d showed up again Thursday, looking like he hadn’t slept all night, without offering an explanation for his absence. Even Annalise had looked suspicious.

Now, it’s Friday, and they’re in court, defending a client on an embezzlement charge. Laurel is seated next to Frank, who has been uncharacteristically still for the last ten minutes. Curious, she glances over at him, and finds that he’s rested his chin on his hand and closed his eyes.

And fallen asleep. In the middle of court.

“Frank,” she hisses softly. It doesn’t even make him stir, and she raises her voice. “ _Frank_.”

Still, nothing.

Finally, she jabs him with her elbow as inconspicuously as she can manage, and he comes to, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and turns his attention back to the front groggily. Laurel narrows her eyes at him, but doesn’t ask any questions and does the same.

That is, until fifteen minutes later, when he drifts off again.

She rolls her eyes. “Frank. Wake _up_.”

Someone shushes Laurel from the row behind her, and she looks back to find Michaela glaring daggers. She presses her lips into an annoyed line in response and turns her attention back to Frank, who has started to lean dangerously to one side, so much so that Connor, who is seated on his left, takes notice and raises an eyebrow.

This time, Laurel steps on his foot – hard. He snaps awake quickly, and scowls at her.

“What’s going on with you?” she leans over and whispers.

Frank waves her away. “Nothing.”

He falls asleep again two more times, and each time she elbows him or stomps on his foot to wake him up before anyone else besides Connor notices. Thankfully the judge calls a recess before Frank can do it for the third time, and when the court reconvenes he returns with coffee. It keeps him conscious for the rest of the afternoon, and afterward they return to the office to shore up their defense and write up the prep questions for their witnesses tomorrow.

Laurel tries unsuccessfully to corner Frank and get answers from him, but he dodges her, and leaves at five even though Annalise had made it clear she wanted all hands on deck tonight for this case.

“What exactly do we think is going on there?” Connor asks the question on everyone’s mind after the front door shuts behind Frank, as they sit around in the living room with case files in their laps.

“I just wish we had that kind of job security,” Michaela grumbles. “If one of us left this early Professor Keating would crucify us.”

“Maybe he’s on a giant bender,” Asher jumps in. “Booze. Drugs. Hookers. Man, I should see if I can get in on that!”

“Frank wouldn’t do that,” Laurel leaps to his defense without even realizing it.

Connor looks at her with knowing eyes. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

She flushes and glares at him, and he drops it. Her past relationship with Frank isn’t exactly a secret, but Asher still doesn’t know, and the last thing Laurel needs is to hear the inevitable string of dumbass comments and innuendo he’ll make if he finds out. Luckily, like most things do, his comment flies right over Asher’s head.

“He could be on a stakeout,” Wes mentions. “Something for Professor Keating.”

Laurel doesn’t think so; even Annalise doesn’t seem to know what’s going on. Michaela says as much, and the rest nod in agreement.

Connor shakes his head. “Well, whatever it is, he looks like absolute hell. I almost feel sorry for the guy.”

“Frank’s personal life is none of your business,” Bonnie chides, appearing in the doorway out of nowhere. “Now get back to work. All of you.”

They speculate in hushed tones for a while longer, and then finally buckle down to finish their work for the night. They’re done around nine-thirty, and Laurel hops into her car to head to Frank’s place. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t feel the need to check up on him. He’s more than capable of taking care of himself, but she’s starting to suspect that something might actually be wrong with him, and she’s concerned. They may be over, but that doesn’t mean she’s not allowed to worry.

She knocks on his door, and he answers in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans, looking even more exhausted than he had in court. His eyes are bloodshot, his shoulders slumped, and he looks too tired for his mind to register her presence at his doorstep for a second.

He furrows his brow. “Laurel? What’re you doing here?”

“I just came to see what’s going on,” she answers. “You fell asleep four times in court, Frank. A-and you look like you haven’t slept in days. Is everything okay?”

He exhales sharply, more frazzled than she’s ever seen him. “Yeah. I’m fine, just – look, this really isn’t the best time.”

Frank turns to reach for the door to close it, and when he does, she catches sight of a stain on his sleeve that looks almost like food.

“What’s that on your arm?”

He looks down at his sleeve, and swears under his breath. “Shit.”

“Can I come in?” Laurel presses.

When he hesitates and ultimately shakes his head, she knows for sure that something is wrong. Before he had always jumped on any chance to be alone with her; now, he seems almost like he’s hiding something – and if it was his latest hook-up in his bed, she thinks, he wouldn’t look half as distressed as he does now.

“Not right now,” Frank starts to say. “I’ll text you-“

The sudden, shrieking wail of a baby cuts him off, and both of them freeze. Laurel realizes after a moment that, perplexingly enough, it’s coming from _inside_ his apartment.

The sound makes him look even more distraught. “Christ, not again.”

“What, are you babysitting or something?” she asks suspiciously, because, really, what kind of person would trust _Frank_ with their child for any extended period of time?

Wearily, he relents and steps aside to let her in. “Not exactly.”

He leads her inside, toward the sound of the high-pitched cries. His apartment is in a state of disarray, with a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink and a trashcan that desperately needs to be emptied. Eventually, they come upon a navy blue baby carrier sitting in the middle of his living room – and inside, a red-faced, dark-haired, squalling baby, the source of all the noise.

She looks sideways at Frank, who is watching the baby with a look of terrible misery on his face. “… Frank?”

“One of my ex-girlfriends dropped him here Monday night and then took off,” he finally explains. “She said that he’s mine.”

If he didn’t look so upset, Laurel almost would’ve laughed. Instead, his words stun her into silence, and she gapes at him.

 _Holy crap._ _Frank has a kid._

“Was she one of your… students of the month?” she asks, though she’s almost afraid to hear the answer.

Much to her relief, he shakes his head. “No. Just this girl I dated for a couple months last year, Jenna – but she never told me she was pregnant. I don’t even know if he’s mine.”

Tenderly, Laurel picks the baby up and balances him on her hip, shushing him, until his cries stop and he stares at her with wide, blue-green eyes that look strikingly familiar.

Then she realizes. They’re Frank’s eyes.

“You don’t know if he’s yours?” she walks back over to where he stands and angles the baby toward him. “Look at his eyes.”

Frank opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out, and he runs a hand through his beard as the little thing peers over at him inquisitively. The resemblance is unmistakable, and it seems to unsettle him.

She rocks him gently, a contemplative frown on her face. “Did she tell you his name?”

“Owen. He’s… seven months-old, I think. I don’t know,” he replies, closing his eyes and just about swaying on his feet from exhaustion. “I haven’t slept in days because of him. He cries all the goddamn time, and I have no idea why.”

“Well, for starters, his diaper’s on way too tight, and also backwards,” she observes. “So that might be part of it.”

Frank looks baffled even by the concept of putting a diaper on correctly – and if he can’t do that, then Laurel has no idea how he’ll manage everything else a baby needs. He’s possibly the furthest thing from father material there is. For an instant, she almost feels genuinely sorry for him, but then she remembers that he _has_ kind of brought his on himself.

All his sleeping around was bound to catch up with him sooner or later. Honestly, she’s surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner.

Running a hand through his hair, he walks over to the table in his little kitchenette and plops down in one of the chairs like a lead weight. She sets the sleepy Owen back into the carrier and walks over to Frank, taking a seat across from him. Connor had been right; he looks like absolute hell, like he’s just been run over by a bus. It’s an odd look on him, because she’s rarely seen him be anything less than cool and composed.

“I don’t have any fucking idea what to do,” he admits after a moment. “I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a kid. I can’t even put on a damn diaper. I tried calling Jenna, but her number’s disconnected. She probably skipped town. I could – what? Request a DNA test? If he’s not mine I’m not legally responsible for him, right?”

Laurel’s mouth drops open, her temper flaring up all at once. “Are you serious?”

“Huh?” Frank looks caught off guard.

“I mean, grow up, Frank! You’re making this about you and it isn’t! It’s about your son.” She rises to her feet, cheeks colored with anger. “His mom abandoned him. If you ditch him too he’s not going to have anyone. So stop throwing a pity party for yourself a-and _man up_ for once!”

“Hey, I wasn’t ready for any of this!” he snaps, standing as well. “She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant!”

“Well, can you blame her?” she scoffs. “Would you have really supported her if she’d told you? Been there for her?”

He bristles at the question. “I don’t – I – financially, maybe-“

“You never would’ve wanted anything to do with Owen if she hadn’t just dropped him at your doorstep and you know it.”

Frank opens his mouth to retort, but the words dry up on his tongue, and he ends up letting it fall shut. Instead, he breathes out slowly, his anger overtaken by exhaustion, and sinks down onto the chair again.

“You’re right,” he looks up at her, blue eyes wide. “I just… I don’t know what to do, Laurel.”

Laurel tries to stay mad at him, she really does, but her irritation evaporates the instant he glances at her with those eyes of his, looking like lost child. He’s fine with planting evidence and blackmailing people and doing all manner of other illegal things, but the idea of raising a kid seems to terrify him like no other. It’s almost comical that such a tall, tough, don’t-fuck-with-me kind of guy is so scared of a baby.

Her eyes soften, and she bites her lip, thinking for a moment. Finally, she unfolds her arms and tells him, “Go to bed.”

Frank blinks. “What?”

“You look like you’re going to pass out. I…” she drifts off and shakes her head. “I’ll take care of Owen tonight. Just get some sleep.”

Frank looks so grateful that he might actually cry, and for a while he doesn’t know what to say. By now his brain is short-circuiting from the lack of sleep, and the caffeine in his system has dried up almost completely, leaving him running on willpower alone.

“That… Thank you,” is all he can manage, his voice dripping with sincerity.

His head heavy, he zombie-walks into the bedroom and shuts the door behind him. Once he’s gone, she walks back over to Owen and picks him up again.

“Come on, big boy. Let’s get a diaper on you the right way. Your dad’s kinda clueless, I know, but he’ll learn.” He makes a little gurgle of agreement, and she laughs. “I’ll make sure he does, okay? I promise.”

Frank has a very limited number of baby supplies that he had most likely bought in a panicked rush, but thankfully he’d at least had the foresight to buy diapers and baby food. She changes his diaper, and after she has the baby in her arms again, she takes a good, long look at him. He looks way too much like Frank to not be his. He has his dark hair and his eyes, and, if she looks close enough, even his nose.

She’s almost frightened for Frank’s sake. He isn’t nearly responsible enough to be put in charge of another person.

Laurel crashes on the couch that night, waking up periodically to the sound of Owen’s cries. Taking care of him is tiring, but manageable, and not the impossible challenge it seems to be to Frank. She’s always been good with kids, and all her years of babysitting as a teenager have helped. At five, she wakes up to rock him back to sleep again, and after that can’t fall back asleep, so she gets up and sets about cleaning up Frank’s disaster of an apartment. She washes the dishes, and takes out the trash, and straightens up until everything is in relative order again.

She should get some kind of award for this. Girlfriend of the year, or something.

But she’s not his girlfriend. Kan is her boyfriend - not Frank. Suddenly she feels stupid for even thinking that. They’re not dating now, and they never really were. She doesn’t have to help him like this if she doesn’t want to. She still cares about him, though – probably more than she should – and if he doesn’t get some kind of help she has no idea how he’ll cope on his own.

When the first rays of sunlight start to peak through his blinds, Laurel decides to make breakfast, and so she walks into his kitchen and pulls open his refrigerator to see what ingredients she can scrape together into a meal.

All he has in his fridge is leftover Chinese takeout and beer.

Laurel sighs. She’s never seen anyone less equipped for parenthood than Frank Delfino.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, Frank wakes up to the smell of bacon and eggs cooking.  

But he almost doesn’t care, because for the first time in days his apartment is silent. Totally, completely, blessedly _silent._ He never thought he’d be so happy to hear the sound of silence. He’s still in his jeans and shirt from the night before; he’d been too tired to change out of them before passing out on his bed, and even after sleeping all night he still feels exhausted. With a yawn, he looks over at the clock, and it reads 9:00am. Initially he panics, but relaxes when he realizes that it’s Saturday.

Holy shit. He’s never been more grateful for the weekend.

He changes into a pair of sweatpants and white t-shirt, and ventures out into the kitchen, but the instant he takes a look at his apartment, he stops right in his tracks.

It’s nothing like he’d left it the night before. The mountain of dishes in his sink has been washed and put away. The trash has been taken out. Everything in the kitchen has been straightened, too, and in the middle of it all stands Laurel, at the stove with Owen on her hip, spooning baby food into his mouth while cooking. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and damp like she’s just showered, and she’s wearing one of his loose plaid shirts with a pair of his boxers.

And all at once, Frank becomes acutely aware of how fucking incredible she is.

They’d fought last night. She’d called him out on his bullshit, told him to grow up, and looking back she had been right, though that still doesn’t make him feel any less in over his head. He’s a father. He has a kid. To Frank those words had always sounded like his own personal hell.

Admittedly, they still kind of do.

He can’t think of a way to greet her, and so he just says, “You’re still here.”

She turns. “Yeah. What? I told you I’d watch him.”

She’s perfect. She’s amazing. Even in his ill-fitting clothes without a dab of makeup on, she’s beautiful. They’d had something good going and he’d fucked it up, and he really hates himself for it right then.

Frank shakes his head, drawing himself out of his reverie. “You didn’t have to do all this for me, you know.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” she tells him, reaching over to grab a spatula for the scrambled eggs on the stove. “I did it for Owen. I don’t know how much longer you could've gone on like that.”

He scoffs. “You don’t have any faith in my parenting skills?”

“’Parenting skills’? What ‘parenting skills’? Here,” she walks over to him and shifts Owen into his arms. “Take him. The eggs are burning.”

He complies, and somehow, with Laurel here, holding him doesn’t feel nearly as alien as it had before. In fact, he feels what he thinks might even be the first hints of acceptance. She calms Frank, just like she seems to calm Owen, who already seems to be under her spell too.

“I didn’t know I had any food.”

“You didn’t. All you had was leftover Chinese and beer. So unless I was going to make Budweiser-flavored Kung Pao chicken, I had to run to the store.”

He wants to kiss her in that instant. He really does, more than he can remember ever wanting anything before in his life. He wants to place his hands on her hips and bury his face in her neck and breathe her in, but he doesn’t. That’s not what they are to each other anymore, and like she said, she’s not here for him.

“Where’d you sleep?” Frank asks after a moment.

“On the couch.”

“I would’ve given you the bed.”

“You looked like hell last night. You needed it more than me. You want to do something for me now? Feed him the rest of his breakfast,” she says, motioning to a bowl of baby food sitting on the counter.

Frank takes it, sits down at the table, and settles the baby on his knee, scooping up a spoonful of the baby food and guiding it toward his mouth. But he doesn’t open up, only stares at Frank with big eyes, and he sighs.

“C’mon, little man. Open up. What’re you supposed to say?” he turns to Laurel. “Here comes the train, or something?”

She laughs. “He won’t understand that. Just stick it in his mouth. It’s all you can really do.”

Frank does as she says, and he’s just about to congratulate himself for taking the first few steps in learning how to successfully take care of a kid and becoming a passably good father when-

Owen makes a face, opens his mouth, and spits it right back out. Some lands on Frank’s shirt, but most of it on the makeshift napkin-bib Laurel had fastened around his neck.

“Hey, not cool, bud,” he chides gently. “It tastes good. It’s great. Here, look.”

He doesn’t know what possesses him to taste the baby food; some misplaced notion that it’ll make Owen want to do the same, maybe, and also probably the fact that he has no goddamn idea how to feed a baby. It tastes a lot worse than it looks: hammy, with a litany of other flavors that taste like they belong in dog food. It doesn’t take him long at all to understand why he’d spat it out.  

“ _Christ_. See? Great,” he manages to repeat as he chokes it down.

Owen only stares at him. He doesn’t look convinced.

Laurel, who had been watching them with amusement, laughs again and walks over to where he sits.

“Interesting tactic,” she can’t help but smile. “Here, I got it. Get the food off the stove.”

Grateful for the exchange of duties, he hands Owen off to her and walks over to the stove. “How’d you learn to do all this stuff anyway?”

“What stuff?”

“All these, y’know, kid things.”

“I babysat a lot when I was in high school. I didn’t need the money, but I liked doing it,” she mentions, as she takes a seat at the table and spoons the food into Owen’s mouth with no trouble at all. “I’ve always been good with kids. Oh, and if he keeps spitting out his food, just dip the spoon in it and stick it in his mouth instead of scooping. He’ll teeth on it, and get some of the food too.”

Teething. He’d forgotten that babies did that. Again, he finds himself confronted by his own ineptitude.  

“We need to go shopping, don’t we Owen?” she says, using the high-pitched baby-voice reserved for small children and animals. “You can’t sleep in your carrier forever.”

Frank raises his eyebrows as he pops the toast out of the toaster. “We?”

“You’ll need my help.”

“I know what a baby needs,” he tries to sound nonchalant, but Laurel sees right through him.

“Really? Name ten things.”

“Crib. Diapers. Food. High chair.” _Dammit._ “Uh…”

“Baby monitor. Changing table. Clothes. Stuff to babyproof your apartment. Toys, and teething rings for him to teeth on, because otherwise he’ll bite you. A car seat, too.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Holy hell.”

Frank sets the plates with breakfast on them on the table and takes a seat across from her. Given that he’s mainly been subsisting off of coffee for the last week, a warm meal tastes like heaven, and Laurel’s a pretty good cook, too. For a moment he finds himself wondering how the hell he got so lucky, and how the _hell_ he was stupid enough to mess things up with a girl like her.  

“Your daddy would be lost without me, wouldn’t he?” she giggles in Owen’s ear, as she tickles him and listens to his squeaky little laugh. “Wouldn’t he?”

“Yeah,” he says, abruptly serious. “I owe you, Laurel.”

Laurel grins, and holds his gaze just a second longer than she needs to. “Well, you can thank me later.”

 

\--

 

Frank usually spends his Saturday mornings and afternoons relaxing, enjoying a break from the insanity that is working for Annalise, or fooling around with whatever girl he’d picked up at a bar the night before.

Never once did he think that he’d be picking out cribs at Babies R’ Us, with a baby in his arms and Laurel at his side. He’s been trying to get used to the whole parenthood thing this week, but sometimes… Sometimes, it’s still really hard.

There seem to be so many things he doesn’t know, things he’d never thought he wouldhave to know. For example, before today, he’d had no idea kids were so expensive.

Not that it’s really a problem. Annalise pays him well, and though he’s irresponsible in pretty much every other aspect of his life, he’s conscious of his finances. He can afford everything Owen needs, easily; he’d just had no clue he needed _so much_ – but luckily, Laurel does. She breezes through the aisles like she’s been doing this all along, occasionally glancing at the shopping list in her hand and leading him around the store. His job is mainly to carry the baby and do the heavy lifting, which he is more than all right with.

“That’s why I’m the brains of this operation,” she jokes as they stop in what feels like the hundredth toy aisle, “and you’re the brawn.”

“We make a good team.”

She’s about to open her mouth to reply when they turn the corner into the next aisle, and nearly run headfirst into a mom with a toddler in her shopping cart and her husband at her side, looking just about as thrilled as Frank is to be there. The woman’s eyes light up the moment she sees Owen in his arms, and she squeals.

“Oh, he’s so adorable!” she gushes to Laurel. “What’s his name?”

“Owen,” she answers.

“My son looked just like that when he was a baby. That time really is the best! Enjoy it, because it’s here and gone before you know it.”

Frank has to make a conscious effort not to roll his eyes. That’s debatable.

“How many months is he?” the woman asks.

Laurel smiles politely. “Seven.”

“Only seven? God, you lost that baby weight fast!”

A short, uneasy pause follows.

“He’s not-“ Frank starts to say, but Laurel cuts him off.

“Thanks. You know, it was all worth it in the end.”

He furrows his brow, and after they manage to escape the woman’s fawning and venture into the next aisle, demands, “What was that?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” she shrugs. “Awkwardly explain to her that Owen’s not mine, he’s yours with another woman, and that we aren’t a couple at all, we just slept together a few times?”

Frank pauses and considers that. “Good point.”

After they finish up, they load the car and drive back to his apartment, where they set about clearing out a corner of his living room to assemble the crib there. It’s far from ideal, because the only other actual room in his apartment is his bedroom, yet sufficient enough for the time being. It takes a few hours – and a lot of obscenities on Frank’s part – but eventually they stand triumphantly over the finished product.

It’s only then that it all sinks in for Frank. There’s a crib in his house. A high chair in his kitchen. A car seat in his car. He has a son – right there, chewing on one of his new toys on the carpet; a son who looks so much like him that it’s downright terrifying. He’s a father. He’d known that before, of course, but seeing all these things makes the reality of it hit him, hard.

Laurel notices him surveying the room with a shell-shocked look on his face, and frowns. “Everything okay?”

“Shit, Laurel,” he sighs. “I can’t do this. You know me. How the hell am I supposed to be a dad?”

He thinks for a moment that she might chastise him again for having a pity party, which is exactly what he’s doing, but all she does is look at him with gentle eyes.

“You’ll figure it out. Taking care of a baby isn’t impossible,” she remarks. “And I mean, it’s not like you’re in this alone. I… I’m here.”

“I don’t wanna rope you into this, okay? It’s my problem, not yours.”

“Owen’s not a _problem_ ,” she corrects him, “and you need my help, Frank. Let me help.” She pauses, opens her mouth to say something, then closes it and clears her throat. “I’m gonna order pizza. Your fridge is empty again.”

She turns and starts to walk away, but he calls out after her, “Hey.”

“Yeah?” she spins around, looking as stunning as a vision to him.

For the longest moment Frank doesn’t say anything. He can’t think of anything at all to express how grateful he is, except: “Thanks. Seriously. For everything.”

Laurel gives him an unsure little smile. “What’re friends for, right?”

_Friends_. The word feels like a punch in the gut.

Like always, though, Frank gives no outward sign of it, and only watches her walk into the kitchen to dial the number of a pizza place nearby. It arrives within the hour, and they sit down to eat. Miraculously, Frank manages to spoon Owen’s dinner into his mouth with reasonable success. He spits half of it out, but he counts it as a victory regardless, and Laurel seems to think it’s a step in the right direction too. After that, he disappears into the bathroom to shower, and Laurel goes off to put Owen down for the night. Sometime later, he steps out of the shower and into his bedroom, sliding on a pair of sweatpants to sleep in. Laurel appears in the doorway just as he takes a seat on his bed, in shorts and a t-shirt that she’d retrieved from her apartment earlier in the day.

“Owen’s asleep. Here’s the baby monitor,” she says, handing him the receiver. “I’ll sleep on the couch again.”

He nods toward the large, king-sized bed. “Bed’s big enough for two. My couch is uncomfortable anyway.”

She hesitates, and quickly, Frank realizes why. Here he is: shirtless, only in sweatpants, offering her his bed. With his history, he doesn’t blame her for thinking his intentions might not be good – though they actually are, for once. He’s been too exhausted to think about sex for days. It’s starting to freak him out a bit.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she mutters. “I have-“

“I know, I get it. You have a boyfriend. I’m too tired to try anything, Laurel.” Still, she looks cautious, and he stands, walking over to his dresser and pulling on a t-shirt. “Here. Better?”

“Yeah. All right, fine,” she concedes, making her way to the other side of his bed and sliding underneath the blankets. “But you’re staying on your side of the bed.”

“Got it.”

“And… keep your hands to yourself.”

“You’ve saved my ass these last few days. I’m not gonna try to make a move on you in your sleep.”

Though Frank can’t see her face, he’s pretty sure she rolls her eyes at that.

“Whatever. Goodnight.”

He smirks into the darkness, and reaches over to switch off the light. “Goodnight, princess.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Frank.”

No answer.

The wails on the baby monitor grow louder. It’s three in the morning, and she has a paper due for her criminology class on Monday that she won’t be able to finish today if she doesn’t get any sleep.

“ _Frank_. It’s your turn.”

Frank’s only response is a low grunt. She exhales in frustration. “Get up.”

“Went last time,” he mumbles into the pillow.

Did he? Laurel isn’t sure. All the hours are blurring together, and she’s already been up what feels like a hundred times. Owen is well-behaved enough during the day, but he’s an awful sleeper.

“No. _I_  went last time.”

“Isn’t letting him cry it out good, or something?”

Owen’s crying louder, now. She’s starting to wish she could just temporarily switch off her hearing, or at least put in ear plugs. Groggy and increasingly desperate, she moves her leg over and kicks him.

Frank hisses in pain, but still doesn’t budge. “ _Fuck_.”

“He’s _your_ son.”

That finally proves to be the leverage she needs, and with another grunt he gets to his feet, shuffling out the door and into the living room. Laurel buries her head into the blanket, and after a moment, she hears Frank’s voice crackle over the baby monitor on the nightstand.

“ _C’mon, big guy. Ssh, hey_ , _it’s all good. What’s up? Did you – oh. Okay, yeah.”_

She hears rustling on the other end, probably Frank looking for a diaper. Then, there’s a long pause, at least thirty seconds, during which she remembers that he doesn’t really know how to put one on, and so she sighs and hauls herself out of bed too. She comes upon him standing at the changing table they’d assembled in the corner, struggling with a diaper just like she’d anticipated.

“That’s on backwards,” she yawns.

He blinks the sleep out of his eyes. “You kidding? Again?”

“It’s not hard. The side with the tabs goes on the back,” Laurel says patiently, handing him another one. “Don’t put it on too low either. He’ll pee over top of it. And if you can fit two fingers in the top it means it’s not too tight.”

It takes a little more instruction on her part, but eventually he succeeds, and settles Owen back down in his crib. Instead of going back to bed, however, he stands there for a while in silence, a look of contemplation on his face, and what Laurel thinks almost might be affection in his eyes.

“It’s crazy,” he says after a second, running a hand through his beard. “That he’s mine. My kid.” Frank shakes his head. “I’m not gonna screw this up. My pops was never around, and it sucked. I’m not doing that to him.”

Laurel glances sideways at him through the darkness. And she sees, for the first time, that he really does have it in him to be a good father.

She’d had her doubts at first – who wouldn’t have, with a guy like Frank? But he seems different to her, softer somehow, with the look of an exhausted new parent about him. He hasn’t made a single advance or sexual innuendo toward her all weekend, even after she’d joined him in his bed. For any other guy that would be considered normal, but for Frank it’s borderline astounding. He doesn’t look like he’s going to shirk his responsibilities now; even though he’s still struggling to get acclimated, she can see that he’s trying.

Before she can fight it off, affection wells up inside her chest. The tenderness in his eyes almost makes her weak in the knees – but then Kan worms his way back into her head, and she remembers that no guy is supposed to do that to her except him.

Laurel makes herself look away. Her heart is beating just a bit too fast for comfort.

 

\--

 

In the morning, she awakes to the warmth of another body close to her. Way closer than it should be.

She squints in the bright sunlight that seeps in through his blinds and spills across his sheets in golden streaks, only to find that she’s all the way on Frank’s side of the bed. And not only is she on Frank’s side of the bed, but she’s nestled in at his side with her arm slung across his chest.

Well, so much for telling him to keep _his_ hands to himself.

She doesn’t know how they ended up like this over the course of the night, but surprisingly, her first instinct isn’t to pull away, although it should be. She has a boyfriend. She should be waking up next to Kan, sweet, wonderful, amazing Kan. Kan, who doesn’t have a kid or any other baggage, who would be so easy to be with. But being here with Frank feels like the most natural thing in the world, like she’s a puzzle piece finding her perfect fit at his side. The only word she can call to mind is _right_. This feels so _right_. She can feel the firmness of his chest beneath her hand, see the gentle rise and fall of his chest, smell his musky, pine-scented cologne on his sheets. She’s totally enveloped in Frank – and she’s missed this. God, she’s missed it so much.

Does sharing a bed with the guy you used to screw technically count as cheating? Laurel isn’t sure, but the longer she assesses their current situation, the more it seems like it does.

Frank stirs just then, drawing her out of her thoughts, and before she has time to pretend that she’s still asleep, his eyes open.

“Hey,” he greets. His voice is raspy with sleep, his hair disheveled and sexy. She thinks that she might stop breathing.

_Pull away, Laurel. Pull away. You have a boyfriend. You have-_

She silences those thoughts for an instant, and smiles sleepily. “Hey.”

“What happened to staying on our own sides of the bed?” he jokes, raising an eyebrow.

She gulps, her mouth suddenly very dry. Her sleep-addled state of mind fades, and when it does the guilt comes crashing onto her in waves. That’s when she finally snaps out of it, and yanks herself away, shaking her head. “I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-“

“Hey,” he sits up as she scrambles off the bed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine-”

“That’s not it, I…” Laurel sighs, the words escaping her. “I just… Kan-“

“Look, nothing happened. Like you said, we’re friends.”

_Friends._ That’s bullshit, and they both know it. But neither of them acknowledges that fact aloud, and for a moment she stands there in silence, her eyes lowered.

“It’s Sunday. We have work tomorrow,” she changes the subject swiftly. “What’re you gonna do about Owen?”

Frank sets about making the bed. “I have him in daycare, but it closes at six, and most nights we’re at the office until nine, at least. I’m gonna talk to Annalise.”

“You think she’ll be flexible?”

“For a while, maybe. We go way back. I’ll convince her to help me out, at least until I can get a babysitter or something.”

“What about Bonnie? Does she know?”

He scoffs. “No. Nobody knows about this but you and me, and if I told Bon I’d never hear the end of it. She’s always on my back about sleeping around.”

“Well, you kind of had a problem, didn’t you?”

“With sleeping around? Yeah, probably, but I won’t be doing it anymore. I can’t exactly pick up chicks at the bar with a car seat in my car.”

Laurel rolls her eyes. “How tragic.”

Frank stops for a moment, and stares at her closely. “Not that I want to, anymore.”

She catches the meaning behind his gaze, and her throat tightens. He’s making this whole ‘keeping it platonic’ thing really damn hard on her.

“Frank…” her voice holds a note of warning in it.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he tells her. They both know it’s a lie, and a bad one at that. “I’m tired as hell all the time. A lack of sleep can really kill your sex drive.”

Laurel shakes her head and reaches into the overnight bag she’d brought for her toothbrush.

“I’m gonna run to the library for a couple hours. I have a paper for my criminology class due tomorrow. You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah. But you should go home afterward, Laurel,” he says. “You’ve been here all weekend. I didn’t mean to drag you into this.”

“ _I_ dragged myself into this,” she replies as she steps into his bathroom. “And I don’t mind helping. Seriously.”

He appears in the bathroom doorway, leaning against it with his arms folded. “Let me make you breakfast first, then.”

She acts impressed. “You cook?”

“Not well. But I owe you.” Frank stops to think, and when he looks at her his blue eyes are wide with sincerity. They almost make her shiver, but she catches herself. “I just don’t know how to thank you.”

Laurel pauses. This all so domestic, like boyfriend and girlfriend. Last night they’d been more like husband and wife. If anyone, she thinks, she should be doing this with Kan. She should _want_ to do something like this with Kan.

_Then why doesn’t she_?

She gargles and spits into the sink, brushing past him on her way out the door with a smile. “Let’s start with breakfast.”

Frank isn’t half as bad a cook as he’d made himself out to be, but she supposes that that comes from being Italian. She says as much to him, and he pretends to be hurt.

“That’s a stereotype,” he tells her over eggs benedict and orange juice. “And I’m offended.”

After breakfast, she disappears to the campus library until noon. Writing the paper takes a little longer than it would’ve had she been running on a full night’s sleep, but she manages. After she finishes, Laurel doesn’t go back to her place like he’d said she should. She doesn’t even really want to, though she knows it would mean a good night’s sleep before class on Monday. Owen isn’t her responsibility, she knows that, but seeing him with Frank, Frank holding a baby… It had triggered some kind of weird maternal instinct inside her. She’s only helping him for Owen’s sake – or at least that what she tells herself in her moments of doubt.

But she’s a notoriously bad liar, even to herself.

She shows up right back at his door later that day, with a few changes of clothes and other essentials in a bag at her side. It doesn’t feel like a chore, an obligation.

Oddly enough, to Laurel, it feels like coming home.

 

\--

 

Laurel goes to the office after class on Monday feeling even more tired than usual – which, with her crazy forty-plus hours a week, is saying something. They’re working on the defense of a high-profile businessman on trial for tax fraud, which means a lot of time spent sifting through financial documents that are already sleep-inducing enough without a lack of sleep on top of it. Frank is already there, seated at the desk in the corner of the living room, flipping through paperwork and looking just as drained.

They briefly exchange empathetic looks as she takes her seat, but bury themselves in work with the rest of the Keating Five shortly afterward. Laurel manages to stay mostly alert for the better part of an hour, though the endless piles of tax returns are just as mind-numbing as she’d thought they would be. Thankfully, if she angles her head away from the rest of the group just right, she can get away with closing her eyes for a bit every so often to recharge.

Those short power-naps keep her going for a while, and it’s only later, as Wes and Connor are trying to explain a theory they have about one of their client’s business partner’s involvement in the fraud to her, that the others start to notice. At some point in their story, Laurel zones out completely, with a thousand-yard stare in her eyes. Wes’s voice sounds like it’s a million miles away, white noise in the background.

She’s only brought back to earth by the obnoxious waving of Connor’s hand in her face. “Earth to Laurel. Hey, you paying attention? This is important.”

She shakes her head. “Yeah, I just… Yeah. Keep going.”

“Are you okay?” Wes leans over, noticing the bags under her eyes. “You look… really tired.”

“What’s the matter?” Connor undertones as he wriggles his eyebrows. “You catch what Frank has?”

She glances over at Frank, and finds that he’d had the same idea, resting his head on his hand and closing his eyes too. She’s about to reach over to rouse him when Annalise, who has been eyeing the two of them suspiciously all day, stalks into the room with her arms folded.

“My office, Frank,” her voice cuts through the air like a knife. Then, her gaze moves to Laurel, whose stomach twists in anxiety. “You too, Miss Castillo.”

A foreboding ‘oooo,’ courtesy of Asher, trails after them as they get to their feet and follow Annalise into her office like disobedient schoolchildren. She isn’t sure if Frank has talked to her yet, though in light of recent events she has the notion that he’s probably been putting it off. All she knows for sure is that being called into Professor Keating’s office is never good, especially not when her eyes are narrowed dangerously like they are now.

As they step inside and stand in front of her desk, she meets Frank’s gaze out of the corner of her eye. He looks back, and presses his lips into a grim line as if anticipating a tongue-lashing.

“Now,” Annalise begins, as she circles around her desk like a shark in the water and comes to stand behind it. “I’m only going to ask this once, so do not lie to me. Either of you. What’s going on between you two?”

“Nothing,” Frank says firmly. Technically, she knows he isn’t lying, but given their past, it feels like a lie anyway.

“First you show up exhausted, leaving early, arriving late.” She then turns toward Laurel, who wilts underneath her steely glare. “Now so are you. If the quality of your work starts to slip-“

He leaps to her defense. “Don’t put this on her, Annalise. It-“

“I’ve told you time and time again, Frank, there is an anti-fraternization policy in this firm. And you’ve been working here for months, Miss Castillo. By now you should’ve known better-“

Finally, Frank raises his voice and interrupts her, “I have a kid, okay?”

At once, Annalise stills. Her expression goes from shock, to confusion, and then finally to what on anyone else’s face might be amusement. It’s the closest Laurel has ever seen the woman come to laughing.

“What?”

“His name’s Owen. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I didn’t even know. My ex-girlfriend dropped him off a week ago.” He pauses, and nods sideways at her. “She’s been helping me, because I have no damn idea what to do with a baby. We’re not sleeping together. I know it’s hard to believe, but we’re not.”

Annalise looks shocked into silence, which Laurel knows is no small feat, because she’s about as far from easily shocked as they come.

Finally, she turns her attention to Laurel. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” she nods quickly. “There’s… nothing else going on.” _Physically, at least. Emotionally… that’s a whole different story._

“I need you to let me off at five-thirty for the next couple days. The daycare closes at six,” Frank finally says. Annalise raises a skeptical eyebrow. “I know you did all last week too, but it’ll just be temporary, until I can figure something else out. Look, I… I’m just trying to do good. Step up, for once.”

Annalise doesn’t say anything for a moment, but by now it’s clear her anger has faded. Laurel thinks she can almost see a glimmer of pride in her eyes, faint as it may be.

“All right,” she nods, her tone markedly less harsh. “But for now, get back to work.”

About to faint in relief, Laurel turns to leave as well, but Annalise calls out after her, “Not you. Stay.”

She shoots Frank a startled look, and he frowns in return as he opens the door and makes his way out into the living room again. Once he is gone, Annalise steps out from behind her desk and stops in front of Laurel, who by now is nearly shaking in her boots. She doesn’t look mad anymore, but most times she doesn’t before going off on a tirade, and Laurel watches her nervously, like a bomb that might go off any second.

“Help him, Miss Castillo,” she finally says, brushing past Laurel and reaching for the door. “Trust me, he’ll need it.”


	4. Chapter 4

Everything settles into a relatively comfortable – if not exhausting – routine.

Frank ends up hiring a babysitter to pick Owen up from daycare during the week and stay with him at his apartment until he finishes work, which costs a hell of a lot of money but is his only real option with his crazy hours. Almost every day, he and Laurel leave work together under the increasingly suspicious eyes of the rest of the Keating Five, and almost every night, she spends the night at his place. She unofficially moves in. It’s sort of like an unspoken agreement, and one that he doesn’t want to jeopardize by mentioning out loud that she’s all but living with him.

Over time, they get better at staying on their own sides of the bed. He still thinks it’s platonic bullshit, but she still has a boyfriend, and seems to have set her mind firmly against cheating again. He doesn’t like it, but he has to admire her for standing her ground, at least. And for resisting him, because he knows damn well he’s hard to resist.

After a week passes, Frank decides to make his peace with it and give up the pursuit, something that he hasn’t done with a girl in…well, ever. If this is all of Laurel he’ll ever get, then he guesses he’ll just have to be happy with what he has – which, coincidentally, seems to be a lot more time than her _actual_ boyfriend gets, lately. She doesn’t bring up Kan much, unless she decides they’re getting a bit too close and wants to put some distance between them. He wonders if there’s trouble in paradise, and then tries to remind himself that it doesn’t matter to him, because they’re _friends_.

He isn’t used to having platonic relationships with women, except for Bonnie and Annalise. He’s not sure he ever really has.

But he honestly doesn’t know what he would do without her, especially when everything with Owen is so new and fucking terrifying. She’s saved him. He owes Laurel more than he can ever probably repay, and he has no idea how to even start making it up to her.

One morning a week later, as he’s washing the breakfast dishes and she’s about to step out the door to head to class, he calls out suddenly after Laurel to stop her.

“Hey,” he says, reaching into the shallow glass bowl on the counter where he keeps his keys and tossing an extra set to her. “Got something for you.”

Laurel furrows her brow, and when she opens her palm to see what he’s thrown at her, she looks hesitant. “Keys?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Just figured since you’re over here all the time, you could use ‘em.”

Giving her a set of keys makes this thing they have – whatever the hell it is – feel official. Laurel seems to be thinking the same thing when she fidgets awkwardly and lowers her eyes.

“Frank, I don’t…” she sighs. “I-I don’t need these.”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. It doesn’t mean anything. They’re just keys.”

Sure, they’re _just_ keys, like they’re _just_ friends. He used to be good at lying. He wonders what happened.

“Uh, okay,” Laurel mutters, voice strained. “Thanks. I’ll see you at work.”

The rest of the day passes relatively slowly for Frank. They spend what feels like ages in court defending a client on trial for extortion that afternoon, and are at the office until eight-thirty. He and Laurel manage to leave together without attracting much attention to themselves, though Frank catches a glimpse of Bonnie eyeing them warily as they slip out the door after everyone else has departed. They’d eaten takeout at the office hours ago for dinner, and so they head straight back to his apartment to relieve the babysitter and settle in for the night. For the first time in what feels like ages, they have nothing to do: her work for her classes is finished, he’d done all his at the office, and Owen is, miraculously, sound asleep in his crib.

“Never thought I’d live to see the day,” he remarks, as he pours a glass of wine and holds it out for her. “You should go home. I got this tonight.”

She shrugs and takes a sip. “I’m already here. Why don’t we just… I don’t know, watch a movie or something?”

“Movie night? Really?” he raises his eyebrows. She rolls her eyes.

“Well, do you have a better idea?”

_Yeah. Come to bed with me. Let me kiss you, and touch you, and make you come until you’re screaming, and-_

He stops that train of thought before it can venture further, and shakes his head, making his way over to the couch. “Fine. What do you wanna watch?”

Laurel rummages through his cupboards, until she finds what she’s looking for: popcorn. She shakes her head, and sticks it in the microwave. “I don’t care, as long as it’s not a scary movie. I hate those.”

He smirks, and reaches for the remote. He has the perfect idea.

“What, are you a wimp or something?” he asks, as she takes the popcorn out of the microwave and pours it into a bowl.

“Yes. I am,” she confesses, sinking down onto the other end of his couch. “So, what are we-“

Laurel freezes when she sees what he’s pulled up on Netflix: a movie poster with a pale-faced woman, one wide eye bulging out from behind her hair, with the words _The Grudge_ spelled out across the top in red lettering.

“No,” she glares at him. “I’m not watching this, Frank. I already get no sleep; I don’t need to have nightmares, too.”

“C’mon. It’s not gonna give you nightmares. And you can’t tell me you hate horror movies and expect me not to make you watch one.”

“Give me the remote,” she orders, and when he doesn’t, she reaches over to grab it.

He holds it just out of her reach. “My place, my TV. My remote.”

Sensing that she won’t get anywhere, she relents with a scowl, and nestles herself underneath a blanket. “Fine. But if it gets too scary, I’m leaving – and keep the volume down too. Owen’s sleeping.”

“Deal,” he nods, and reaches over to turn off the light next to him, leaving them bathed in darkness save for the glow of the television. “And, y’know, if it’s too _scary_ , I can always hold you.”

She scoffs. “Not happening.”

_We’ll see about that._

He doesn’t pay much attention to the movie; he’s already seen it, and he’s too busy sneaking glances at Laurel, anyway. He can’t even remember the last time he had movie night with a girl – high school, probably. Whenever he gets a girl alone now, watching a movie is definitely not high on his list of priorities.  

He enjoys it with Laurel, though, more than he’d thought he would. She is as easily spooked as he had anticipated, and by the end of the first scene has buried her face into the blanket and almost spilled her wine twice. For a while she keeps her distance from him, as if trying to prove a point, but as the minutes pass she starts to inch toward Frank slowly. She doesn’t get too close – because he’s sure she has established some kind of parameters for herself as to what qualifies as cheating and what doesn’t – though she does end up with her face buried into the couch not far from his shoulder.

“Tell me when it’s over,” she murmurs during one particularly terrifying scene, her voice muffled by the leather.

Frank waits until it is most definitely _not_ over, and just before he knows the woman is about to pop up again, tells her, “It’s over.”

She looks back at the screen just in time for her to pop out suddenly with a burst of dramatic music. Laurel jumps, and after she recovers, elbows him in the ribs.

“Don’t do that.” She exhales shakily, and gets to her feet. “Pause it. I’m gonna make more popcorn.”

Frank can tell that she’s jumpy, by the way her breathing is erratic and her knees tremble as she stands. He waits for a few minutes until he hears the microwave beep, then creeps over to where she stands at the counter, holding the now-full bowl of popcorn. Then, without warning, he reaches out, grabs her hips from behind, and growls in her ear. Laurel practically jumps out of her skin, spinning around rapidly and screaming – and holy shit, he didn’t know she was _that_ jumpy. The popcorn bowl clatters to the ground and spills all over the floor. Once Laurel hears him laughing, she punches him none-too-gently on the shoulder.

Soon, however, she’s laughing too, though he can tell she’s trying hard to stay mad. “Why would you _do_ that? You’re such an asshole! You’re _dead_ , I’m going to kill you-”

She punctuates every other word with a smack on his shoulder, and he puts his arms up to shelter himself from the blows, still laughing.

“Cool it! Ow, cut it out.”

“You’re the worst!” she half-laughs, half-growls. He reaches out and catches her wrists, and tries not to feel his body hum with electricity when he does.

“Am I?” he chuckles. “Am I really?”

They’re laughing together almost like they’re friends, something they never really were before. They did more fucking than talking. Most of the time, that’s exactly what Frank prefers – but not with Laurel. From the start, she’s been different. 

He realizes how close they are at the same time she does, and the smile falls from her lips. He’s still holding her wrists firmly. She isn’t pulling away. For a moment he thinks that she might even kiss him, and under any normal circumstances he would close the gap between them, but he doesn’t, waiting instead for her to take the lead.

Ever since the fiasco with his girlfriend, he’s been trying to win back her trust bit by bit. And though he _really fucking wants to_ , kissing her now definitely won’t help.

Awakened by her scream, Owen’s cry slices through the silence like a knife, and startle them out of their trance-like state. Hastily, Laurel pulls away and clears her throat.

“I got it. You,” she points to the spilled popcorn and forces a laugh to ease the tension, “are cleaning this up.”

He nods, and after locating the dustpan and broom, drops to his knees to sweep up the mess. Across the room, he watches as Laurel picks Owen up out of his crib and coos in his ear, rocking him back to sleep. She calms him down in barely a minute, and Frank finds himself marveling at how easily it all comes to her, when he still feels like a bumbling idiot most of the time.

She’s singing to him softly, now, her voice whispery and soothing. Owen’s cries have turned into content little gurgles. When Laurel turns, she catches his eye from across the room, and smiles a little hesitantly. He’s sure the longing in his eyes is unmistakable. He doesn’t even try to hide it. He feels like a goddamn teenager, with a crush on a girl way out of his league.

And though it might just be a trick of the light, Frank thinks for a second that he can see the same look in her eyes, too.


	5. Chapter 5

Laurel yawns and rolls over, the mid-morning sun falling over her in rays as she stretches. The other side of the bed is empty, the sheets rumpled from where Frank had slept. She has nowhere to be. No classes, no work. It’s Saturday.

_Finally._

Her ears perk up at the sound of laughter in the next room, and she gets to her feet, blinking as her eyes take in the light of the new day. She steps out into the living room, and finds Frank standing at the changing table with Owen, blowing raspberries on his belly and tickling him with a big dopey smile on his face. His deep laugh fills the room, mixing with Owen’s tiny, squeaky one – and _oh God_ , it’s simultaneously the hottest and most adorable thing she’s ever seen a guy do. 

Laurel melts, leaning against the wall as she watches them laugh together. Frank’s eyes are gentle, dancing with amusement. She could stare at him for hours. Her knees feel weak, again, and her heart is beating too fast – again. Frank with a baby is ten times hotter than just Frank by himself, and Frank by himself is already really, _really_ hot.

It’s only then that she realizes how deep she’s in. This is not a drill. _This is not a drill._

Frank looks up just then and spots her, grinning. “Hey.”

There it is again, that damn irresistible grin. She wants to kiss it right off his face. It’s not fair, all the things he can do to her just by looking at her. It really isn’t, and the worst thing is, is that she knows perfectly well he feels the same. On more than one occasion she’s caught him giving her long, lingering looks from across the room. He hasn’t exactly tried to be inconspicuous, and with all the time they spend together, she’s surprised that he hasn’t made a move yet.

For once, he seems to be respecting her boundaries. She appreciates that, and also hates it more than anything.

“You’re great with him,” she says, a small smile playing at her lips. “Seriously. You are.”

“Nah,” he shakes his head and takes the baby into his arms. “Not as good as you.”

She walks over and strokes the back of Owen’s downy head, trying to pretend she doesn’t realize how close she is to Frank – when she does. It’s all she can think about, actually.

“He looks just like you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, he’s got good genes. With any luck he got the gene for growing kickass beards, too. That right, bud?”

She rolls her eyes with a smile. “Give him a few more years for that.”

He takes Owen’s tiny hand and waves it back and forth in her direction, murmuring in his ear, “Say hi to – what are we calling you? Aunt Laurel?”

Owen looks at her and makes a high-pitched, gurgling squeal. She laughs, and pecks him on the forehead.

“Just Laurel.” _The girl I used to sleep with won’t really work._ Laurel swallows, and shakes her head. “So. Breakfast?”

He sets Owen back into his crib, and walks into the kitchen, with Laurel following close behind.

“My turn today. Oh, and I cleared out one of my dresser drawers.” She furrows her brow. He only looks at her. “Y’know. For your stuff.”

Oh, God. She can’t handle this today, not after seeing him with Owen and wanting to kiss the hell out of him already. Now Frank’s looking at her with those eyes of his, getting ready to make her breakfast and offering her a drawer for her stuff. First it was the keys, now this. She doesn’t know how this isn’t considered cheating. It probably is, though she keeps sticking her head in the sand and pretending that she’s still a good person, a good girlfriend.  

Kan had texted her last night, about something Laurel can’t even remember. She’d read it, forgotten to reply, and then fallen asleep next to _Frank_ , in _Frank’s_ bed, in _Frank’s_ apartment. She needs to answer him. She should really get on that, before she looks at Frank again and her mind goes blank like it always does.

“Great,” is all she says, because she isn’t sure she can trust herself to say more. “Thanks.”

The remainder of the day passes in a blur. The whole drawer thing leaves her more than a little freaked out, and so she makes sure to put a fair amount of distance between them at all times. Frank seems to notice, but doesn’t mention it. She feels horribly guilty about it all, even though nothing has happened between them; this time, her infidelity has only been in her head.

Sometimes she thinks that that isn’t as bad as actually cheating, and other times somehow it feels even worse. The only consolation she has, Laurel guesses, is that they haven’t actually done anything.

But it’s not like she hasn’t _wanted_ to.

They order delivery from an Indian place nearby for dinner, and just as the doorbell rings, her phone vibrates in her pocket. She pulls it out, and finds it lighting up with Kan’s name, the icing on the cake of a guilt-filled day. They haven’t seen each other all week, and haven’t been on a real date in God knows how long. The call, preceded by Kan’s smiling contact photo, feels foreboding somehow.  

“I-I have to take this,” she mutters to Frank, as the guilt compels her to hit the green ‘accept’ button and walk off into the bedroom.

She puts on her chirpiest voice to answer, and even smiles for effect. “Kan. Hey.”

“ _Wow. You picked up_ ,” he sounds genuinely surprised, though she can detect a bite in his voice, too. “ _Didn’t think you would_.”

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I?”

“ _I don’t know… it just feels like you’ve been really distant lately, Laurel. I texted you a bunch of times this week, and you haven’t answered, like, once_.”

Her heart drops. It’s clear he isn’t calling to shoot the breeze, though she doesn’t know what she was really expecting, given the way she’s been neglecting their relationship lately.

“I know, I’ve just been so busy,” she falls back on that old, tired excuse. “We got, like, three new cases this week.”

“ _And I believe that, I do, but…_ ”

Laurel tenses. “But… what?”

 _“Look, I came over to your place the past couple nights, to surprise you after work. I stayed over all night, waiting, and…”_ She gulps. _“And you never came home, Laurel.”_

Shit. She’s trapped. There’s no lying her way out of this one, and she wonders for a moment how to phrase this.

_I’m helping the guy I cheated on you with take care of his kid?_

“Yeah, I…” she forces an uneasy laugh. “Okay, this is gonna sound a little crazy, but I’ve been helping one of my co-workers with his son. It’s just… His ex dropped him off a couple weeks ago, out of nowhere. He didn’t even know she was pregnant, a-and he had no clue how to take care of a baby, so I offered to help.”

Well, that had sounded a million times better in her head. On the other end, there is a long, uncomfortable pause.

“ _So, let me get this straight_ ,” he starts, his tone gentle and patient like always, but with that noticeable hint of frustration again. “ _You’ve been staying overnight at your male co-worker’s house every night, helping him take care of his kid? For weeks?_ ”

She grows defensive. “Look, I know how it sounds-“

“ _How it sounds?_ ” he exhales sharply, then softens his voice again. “ _Laurel, I’m… I just don’t think this is working out.”_

“Kan-“

“ _I mean, we aren’t talking. We barely even see each other, which I know isn’t totally your fault because of work, but… Hell, you’ve probably seen that guy more in a week than you’ve seen me all month_.”

“I…” She can feel the tears coming. She hates crying. “Can we a-at least talk about this in person?”

“ _And then what? We kiss and make up, and go on like this for another five months? This isn’t going anywhere, Laurel. I think you can feel it too.”_

“So what?” her voice trembles. “You’re ending this?”

Again, Kan sighs. He’s being so nice about this that it kills her. She wants him to be mean. She just really fucking wants a reason to hate him.

“ _Yeah. I guess I am. I’ll call you in a couple weeks, okay? After the emotions have all worn off? We can still be friends. I don’t want to never see you again_ -“

“Don’t,” she cuts him off harshly, anger flaring up inside her.

That catches him off guard. “ _Don’t… what_?”

“Call. Don’t.”

With that, she hangs up and tosses the phone down onto the bed. Her anger fades, and gives way to sorrow again, her throat tightening. She feels stupid for crying, like _she_ wasn’t the one who ruined them, like this isn’t what’s been coming for weeks – hell, maybe months. They’d been floundering for a while, treading water just to stay afloat, but for some reason that doesn’t make her any less upset. She had loved the idea of Kan so much: generous, sweet, always helping the less fortunate. She had loved the idea of what they could be together. Even now, she still does a little.

She had loved a concept, an abstract idea. Never Kan himself, no matter how hard she’d tried.

Laurel catches sight of a tall figure out of her peripheral vision, and when she turns she finds Frank standing in the doorway, arms folded. She doesn’t have to ask to know that he’s heard everything, and so she wipes at her cheeks, hoping he won’t see the tears.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks almost casually, his tone undemanding. Immediately, she relaxes somewhat, but shakes her head.

“No.”

Frank opens his mouth to say something, then promptly closes it. For a second she wants to ask him what he was going to say, but at the same time she’s afraid to know, and so she doesn’t.

“Food’s on the table,” Frank ends up telling her instead. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She nods and takes a deep breath, following him out into the kitchen. “Yeah. Let’s eat.”

 

\--

 

“Laurel, what the hell did you stick in this outlet?”

Laurel looks over from where she stands behind the counter, washing the dinner dishes, and finds Frank crouched near the wall, struggling to pry a plastic outlet protector out with his fingers.

It’s been two weeks since Kan ended things, and things have returned to a general sense of normalcy, though the tension between them has seemed to mount by the day. Neither one of them has made a move, and there are times that maybe Laurel thinks it makes more sense not to. This co-parenting thing they have going on, whatever the hell it is, would be jeopardized by a romantic relationship, if they ever ended things and went their separate ways. Plus, they work together, which she knows hasn’t deterred Frank in the past, but Annalise had made clear is not permitted. Maybe it’s smarter not to. Maybe they should just be friends, which so far has worked out relatively well.

Maybe they should just… forget it.

“The outlet protector?” she calls back. “It’s so that if Owen decides the outlets look fun to play with, he won’t electrocute himself. It’s babyproofing, I told you.”

“Babyproof my ass. This thing is adult-proof too.”

She dries her hands, walking over and crouching next to him. “Do I have to help you with everything? Just pull it out, it’s not that hard.”

He swears under his breath and pulls back, and so she reaches out to remove it instead. But she doesn’t have much success either, and hisses in pain, drawing her hands away too.

“God, do I have to help you with everything?” he teases.

She tries not to smile. Being so close to him is starting to make her mind feel a little fuzzy. “Shut up.”

Eventually, with their combined strength, they manage to wrench the offending piece of plastic free. They get to their feet, triumphant, and Laurel drops it in his hand, then starts to take a step back into the kitchen. But he doesn’t move aside like she’d thought he would, and their bodies collide, her breasts brushing up against his chest.  

She freezes.

Her cheeks suddenly feel like they’re on fire, and there is a peculiar, hypnotic buzzing in her ears. Her whole body is screaming for his touch, easily overpowering the tiny voice urging her to move away. She’s close enough to catch a whiff of his cologne, musky and woodsy, and _Christ_ , the things that scent does to her. Frank himself, though, isn’t doing anything at all, just staring at her like he’s waiting for her to make the move.

_Just kiss me. Just do it already. Just fucking-_

Screw it. Why is she waiting for him?

In one swift movement, she leans in, snakes her arms around Frank, and kisses him – and the instant she does, she can’t remember how she ever went without this. She doesn’t know how she even _survived_. It isn’t like their first kiss, which had been so demanding and hasty; it’s slow, and deep, and sweet in a way Laurel has never kissed or been kissed before. He tastes like the wine from dinner, and a blend of other flavors that are so distinctly Frank that they make her skin break out in goosebumps. She drinks him in with such hunger that she hardly even recognizes herself, and he responds eagerly, walking her backwards until she’s pressed against the wall.

When they finally break apart, she’s breathing so fast that she’s dizzy. Frank’s pupils are dilated with want, and he’s almost salivating at the sight of her. She’s sure she looks pretty much the same.

“So what?” Frank chuckles, out of breath too. “Am I your rebound now?”

“No.” She interrupts him with another kiss, and pants across his lips, “Never got over you.”

He picks her up and urges her to wrap her legs around him, carrying her into the bedroom like she weighs nothing at all without ever breaking their kiss. The next thing she knows, they’re on his bed with him on top of her, pulling savagely at each other’s clothes like they can never have them off fast enough, and she’s just about to reach down for his belt when-

In the next room, Owen starts to cry, shrill, grating wails that they wouldn’t be able to ignore even if they wanted to.

It kills the mood immediately, and Frank groans. “Dammit.”

“I’ll get him,” she maneuvers herself out from under him. Once she reaches the door, she turns to look back at Frank and grins wickedly. “Clothes off by the time I get back, ‘kay?”

He raises his eyebrows in surprise, but doesn’t protest and only watches as she disappears out the door. Owen doesn’t take long to calm down, thankfully, and one quick diaper change later he’s settled down again.

Laurel can feel herself throbbing between her legs with anticipation as she makes her way back to the bedroom; all she can hear is the sound of blood pumping madly in her ears. It feels like she’s waited forever for this, forever to touch him again. She’s never wanted anyone like this before. She’s never burned for and yearned for and _needed_ anyone’s touch like she needs his.

Frank is standing by the door when she gets back, shirtless but with his pants still on, and she feigns disappointment. “I thought I said-“

He muffles her words by seizing her lips with his in a searing kiss, and practically drags her back to the bed – not that’s she complaining, that is. Once he has her lying down again, he peels her tights and panties off of her legs tortuously slowly, but when her hands go for his belt, he pushes them away and chuckles, pinning them on either side of her shoulders.

She whines at the loss of contact. He’s always liked teasing, but she definitely isn’t in the mood for it tonight, not after they’ve been waiting for so long. “Frank, just-“

The words die on her tongue when he unbuttons her shirt and starts to kiss a trail down her bare stomach, until his lips are hovering over her sex, his hot breath on the inside of her thigh. She looks down, expecting to see mischief sparkling in his eyes, but instead they are strikingly sincere. His gaze is full of tenderness, in a way that makes her toes curl.

“Let me do what I do best,” he purrs, and leans in to taste her. “Let me thank you, Laurel.”


	6. Chapter 6

In the morning, Frank wakes up with a familiar weight on his chest.

He looks down, and finds Laurel sleeping soundly, her face buried into the crook of his neck. She’s naked, her limbs tangled in with his and her messy hair spilling over his shoulder, and he thinks to himself right then that she’s more beautiful than any other woman he’s ever seen in his life. Having her here with him like this almost feels like a dream.

When he dies, he hopes to God this is what heaven will be like.

Last night floods back into his head in quick bursts of memory: how he’d ‘thanked’ her until she was weak and her thighs were trembling; how they’d gone until they were both spent, and then fallen asleep in each other’s arms. He isn’t even sure how long it’d been. It had felt like hours, days. Out of nowhere he finds himself struck by the urge to kiss her – every inch of her. He never wants to _stop_ kissing her.

She’s taken on so much to help him, and he knows full well he doesn’t deserve any of it. Hell, he doesn’t deserve _her_. He’d royally screwed things up between them before, but now that he has her again, he’s not letting go, ever. Frank isn’t stupid enough not to know a good thing when he sees it, and Laurel is more than a good thing. She’s the best he’s ever had, so much so that he doesn’t even want to think about having any other girl ever again. He’s never felt like this before; he needs to be with her like he needs the air in his lungs, like he needs to fucking breathe.  

He shifts sideways to face her, and presses a gentle kiss to each of her closed eyelids. The bristle of his beard scratches her skin and makes her stir. When he pulls back her eyes flutter open, glittering in shades of blue and grey as they catch the morning light. For a moment he thinks that she’ll panic, call last night a mistake and scurry out of his arms like she had the last time they’d woken up like this.

But she doesn’t. She only smiles lazily and yawns, her nose crinkling in the most adorable way. “Good morning.”

“Morning, sunshine,” he says, threading her fingers through his and playing with them idly. She giggles, and he raises his eyebrows playfully. “What?”

“Nothing,” she grins. “I’m just happy. I missed this. Waking up next to you.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I thought I would be sad after Kan ended it,” she admits. “And I was, for a couple days. But then I was almost… I don’t know. Relieved.”

He smirks. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know.”

She laughs, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tells her, straight-faced, “I’m serious about us this time, y’know.”

“What, you weren’t last time?” she laughs again, sitting up and stretching. “You don’t exactly have a history of being great at monogamy.”

“Maybe. But I want to give us a shot.” He reaches up to rub her back. “A real shot. Whatta you say?”

Laurel doesn’t answer for a moment, and chews on the inside of her cheek in contemplation. His stomach is almost in knots waiting for an answer; he’s never been much of a fan of pillow talk, especially about something so serious so early in the morning.

Then finally she smiles, and rests her chin back down on his chest. “You already knew I’d say yes.”

Frank hadn’t, actually. He’d been really afraid she would say no, but he winks at her anyway, not missing a beat.

“Yeah. Just wanted to hear you say it.”

“Then yes,” she pecks him on the lips. “Yes.”

Without warning, Frank reaches up and crushes her mouth harder against his, deepening the kiss and eliciting a surprised but pleased squeak from Laurel. He feels her smile against his lips, as their touches grow heated and she makes her way on top of him, straddling his thighs. He reaches up to toy with her nipple, and she bites her lip, eyes narrowed with desire as they survey his bare chest. He’s about to line himself up and slip inside her when she pulls away suddenly, panting, and reaches over into his nightstand.

“Wait,” she breathes, then clambers atop him again once she’s found when she’s looking for: a little foil packet they’d gone through at least five of last night. She kisses him again, teeth grazing his bottom lip, and laughs as she tears it open.

“We’re using this. We can barely handle one kid as it is.”

 

\--

 

“He should start kind of talking soon, you know,” Laurel mentions later that day, as they sit across from each other on a brightly-colored play mat on his living room floor, with Owen seated between her legs while Frank tries passing a ball back and forth with him. He doesn’t have much interest, however, and the few times his clumsy little fingers actually manage to get ahold of the ball, he just drops it and lets it roll off into the kitchen.

He does that just then, and Frank sighs, getting to his feet again to retrieve it. “No shit. Really?”

“Yeah, I was reading an article about it online. He won’t really understand what he’s saying, but he’ll make sounds that’re more like the words he hears. So you have to stop swearing around him. He’ll pick those words up too.”

“When does he walk?” he asks, taking a seat again and nudging the ball toward Owen, who, for the umpteenth time, simply sends it rolling away. Frank chuckles. “C’mon, buddy, you gotta quit doing that.”

“At about a year, I think. He’s already really good at crawling. He should start sleeping all the way through the night soon, too. Here, give me that,” she reaches for the ball after Frank fetches it, and holds it up to Owen. “Say ball, Owen. Can you say ball? _Ball_?”

Owen looks at her for a second, doesn’t answer, and then crawls over to a nearby toy, busying himself with that instead.

“He’ll get it eventually,” she shrugs. “It takes time.”

Time. Frank does a quick mental calculation. Owen’s eight months-old now; he’ll be a year in four months. It’s late February, and in four months it’ll be June, when all other law students will be occupied with their summer associate positions at various firms around the city. He can only assume Laurel will do the same, but then what? She’ll come home at night and continue to take care of a baby that isn’t hers? For how long? He’d never thought this arrangement of theirs would be indefinite. When her career ambitions inevitably lead her elsewhere, he knows it can’t be. 

“Don’t feel responsible for any of this,” he blurts out suddenly.

She frowns, tearing her eyes from Owen. “What?”

“I mean… Just don’t feel tied down by Owen or me, okay? When you graduate, if you want to take a job somewhere else, or if something comes up, don’t stay for us, it’s…” He pauses, shaking his head. “I don’t wanna get in your way. That’s what I meant.”

Laurel doesn’t reply for a minute, then makes her way over to him on the floor without saying a word, settling herself down onto his lap and curling her arms around the back of his neck.

“One? I like being here with you and Owen. If I didn’t I would’ve jumped ship weeks ago. A-and when I said I wanted to take a shot at this, I meant with both of you – and two? I don’t feel tied down. If I take a job in another city…” Laurel shrugs. “You’ll just come with me, I guess.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Sure,” she grins, and leans in to kiss him. “You can be a stay-at-home dad.”

He isn’t sure he’s totally down with that idea, but doesn’t say anything and only kisses back hungrily. Laurel pulls away after a moment, and gets to her feet. He does the same, and they look on at Owen side by side, who has stuck a teething ring in his mouth and started biting it.

He’d crashed into Frank’s life totally out of nowhere; there are times he sees him and still can’t really believe he’s actually _his_. But before when he’d only ever felt panic when looking at him, now he feels fondness, affection, maybe even the first few hints of what could be love. Laurel looks over at him just then, and seems to notice the look of contemplation in his eyes.

“I know you said you didn’t think you could do this,” she remarks softly, bringing him out of his thoughts. “But I think you can.”

He gives her a doubtful look. “You really think I’m doing okay?”

“You’re doing better than _okay_. You’re spending time with him. That’s more than my parents ever did.” He furrows his brow, and so she explains with a sigh, “I was raised by a nanny. My parents only ever paid any attention to me and my brothers and sisters when they would make us do those stupid photoshoots for my dad’s campaign posters, or when one of us got in trouble and risked screwing up the family image.”

She goes silent for a minute, eyes downcast, and then suddenly seems to remember something. “Oh! I almost forgot.”

She disappears into the next room and returns with what looks like a children’s book in her hands. The words _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ are written across the top, and when Laurel holds it out to him, he stares at her.

“What’s this? Some light reading?”

She rolls her eyes and smiles. “I stopped by a bookstore after class a couple days ago. We should be reading to him; it’s good for babies. C’mon.”

They end up on the couch, with Owen settled on his lap and Laurel nestled in at his side. Frank is dubious as to the actual educational value of the book – all it involves is a caterpillar binge-eating his way to becoming a butterfly – but he reads it through to the end anyway, with Owen listening intently and Laurel’s head on his shoulder.

When he finishes, he closes the book and looks down at Owen, only to find that he hadn’t been listening intently at all; he’d fallen asleep, his little head lolling to the side.

“Looks like he’s just about as into reading as I am,” he remarks, glancing over at Laurel. Her eyes are closed too, however, and so he nudges her gently. “Was I really that boring?”

She hums lowly and opens her eyes. “No. I was just listening. You have a nice voice. He asleep?”

“Out like a light. If I’d known reading to him was all it took, I would’ve starting doing it weeks ago.” He makes a move to get to his feet. “I’ll put him in his crib.”

“Don’t,” she whispers, pulling a nearby blanket over herself. “You’ll wake him up. Let’s just stay like this.”

He nods and sits back against the couch, relishing in the silence, save for peaceful sound of Laurel and Owen’s breathing. It’s probably the closest he’s ever come to having a real sense of… he doesn’t know. Family?

Yeah, family. He’d never wanted a family before, even for a second – but now he thinks he understands why people do.

“I couldn’tve done any of this without you, y’know,” he tells Laurel after a minute, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it.

She smiles without opening her eyes and squeezes his hand back. “I know.”

With a grin, Frank leans his head back against the couch and closes his eyes too, their clasped hands resting in the space between them.


	7. Chapter 7

Two weeks pass by relatively without incident.

Owen sleeps more and more soundly each night, a blessing Laurel is beyond thankful for. It’s still tiring, juggling classes, work, and parenting – but in spite of it all, she’s happy. Happier than she can remember being in a long time, actually.

Two weeks pass without incident, and then, one Thursday morning, they get a call from Owen’s daycare in the morning, just as they’re about to leave to drop him off and go to the office.

With a scowl, Frank hangs up the phone after listening to the person on the other end of the line, and Laurel furrows her brow, balancing Owen on her hip by the door. “Who was that?”

“The daycare,” he answers. “They’re closed today. Water main break, or something.”

“What’re we going to do with Owen? Are you gonna call in sick?”

He shakes his head. “Can’t. I already left early way too many times last month. If I don’t show up again it’ll piss Annalise off, big time.”

“So… what?”

He stops to think for a moment, then reaches for the diaper bag in the corner and heads for the door. “We take him with us.”

“We can’t do that! Annalise will kill you-“

Frank turns to look at her. “You got a better idea?”

“No, but won’t bringing him with us piss her off more?”

“Look, I’ve been doing illegal shi-” Laurel glares at him, silencing him mid-curse for Owen’s sake, and so he rephrases. “Stuff. Illegal stuff for Annalise for almost a decade. She can put up with this for one day. Now c’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

Frank seems confident enough, but Laurel isn’t nearly as sure; she can already picture the look on the woman’s face when they walk into the office with a baby in tow, and it won’t be pretty. They’ve been keeping Owen’s existence and their cohabitation a secret from the rest of the Keating Five, too, and she really isn’t looking forward to the inevitable judgmental stares she’ll receive from Connor and Michaela. Or Bonnie’s quiet disapproval. Or Asher’s twelve-year-old-esque innuendo.

Still, Laurel sucks in a deep breath, summons all her courage, and follows him out the door anyway.

 

\--

 

“Wait… so you’re saying that Frank has a kid? That _that’s_ Frank’s kid?”

Connor is staring at her from his seat on the couch in the living room, incredulous. Wes looks weirded out, though he’s trying hard not to, and Michaela is eyeing Laurel with her eyebrows raised. Asher is sniggering into his coffee. Even Bonnie, who is standing in the doorway beside her, is trying not to laugh – and Laurel’s never seen her even come close to laughing before. Not once.  

Annalise had whisked the three of them away into her office as soon as they’d arrived before anyone could notice Owen, reading them the riot act and giving the ‘this is an office, not a daycare’ lecture she’d been anticipating. Frank, however, had managed to convince her that this was his last resort, and somehow persuaded her to deal with it – just for the day.

And so now she’s standing in the doorway to the living room, with Frank at her side holding Owen and glaring at Connor.

“Yeah, I have a kid,” he snaps, and takes a seat on the recliner in the next room, settling Owen onto his lap. “Now get to work.”

“What’s his name?” Wes asks cautiously.

“Owen,” Laurel answers.

Connor furrows his brow. “Who’s Owen’s… y’know, _mom_?”

For a moment Laurel thinks Bonnie will step in and intervene, but she doesn’t. She looks as curious as the rest of them, and so she just stands there, waiting for an answer from Frank.

“None of your damn-” Frank starts to say, but stops when Laurel makes a face to remind him to watch his language. He exhales sharply, and grinds his teeth. “None of your business, Hair Gel.”

The brief interaction doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the group. Connor narrows his eyes, assessing the situation for a moment before finally deciding that shutting up is probably best, if he wants to avoid being throttled by Frank.

“Professor Keating,” Michaela directs her attention to Annalise as she steps out of her office, coat in hand. “I don’t see how bringing a baby here is appropriate for a work environment-“

“I don’t either, Miss Pratt,” Annalise answers with an audible edge in her tone. “But I’m allowing it today, so I don’t want to hear any more talk about it. Is that clear?”

Meekly, they nod, though Laurel can feel how hungry they are for answers, Connor and Michaela especially. Avoiding their eyes, Laurel goes to take her seat next to Wes and picks up a case file in an attempt to engross herself in work. Annalise and Bonnie head off to the DA’s office not long after, leaving the five of them alone with Frank. Laurel takes refuge in the paperwork, but after a while loses focus, and her eyes start to gravitate toward Frank in the next room, who is reviewing case files as well.

Every so often, Owen manages to get a piece of paper in his mouth, and so Frank has to pluck it out and scold him quietly, though after a while he stops scolding him and only chuckles. Eventually, he gives up trying to work altogether and engages in a game of peekaboo with him, poking his head out from behind a manila folder. Before long Laurel is mesmerized; there’s nothing she enjoys more than watching him interact with Owen, with that tender, playful sparkle in his eye.

It makes her melt. It makes her think for a moment that she might almost be in love with him.

Connor follows her gaze, and frowns. “It’s weird. Seeing Frank all… paternal.”

Everyone looks her way for her reaction, but she doesn’t notice. It’s only when Michaela leans over and demands, “What the hell’s going on, Laurel?” that she snaps out of it and turns her attention back to the rest of the group.

“W-what do you mean?”

“You’re living with him or something, right?” Michaela looks just as snooty and judgmental as she’d envisioned she would. “That’s why you’re tired all the time. Why you leave together almost every day.”

“No, I-“

“You two bumping uglies yet?” Asher chimes in with a wink, making an obscene gesture with his fingers.

“Leave her alone, guys,” Wes pipes up, the same time as Laurel opens her mouth.

“Nothing’s going on, okay? I’m _helping_ him. He didn’t know how to take care of a baby, and so I offered to help him out.”

“Really?” Connor smirks. “So that giant-ass hickey’s from Kan, then?”

_Shit._

Laurel goes red immediately, her hand flying to the mark Frank had left on her neck that, in her haste, she’d forgotten to cover with concealer that morning. She lowers her eyes to the papers in her lap and gulps, humiliated.

“Hey, don’t listen to them,” Wes tries to comfort her. “I think what you’re doing is really cool.”

Everyone stares at him in varying shades of disbelief. Laurel is starting to wonder if dying of embarrassment is actually a thing.

Quickly, he realizes the misunderstanding and rushes to apologize, “O-oh, no… that wasn’t what I… You _helping_ him is really cool-”

“Yeah,” she winces. “Yeah. Thanks. Can we just… get back to work? Please?”

Much to her surprise, they comply, and work peacefully like that for a while, the only sound to be heard the rustling of papers as they read up on potential precedents for their most recent case. After a while, Frank disappears into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, leaving Owen with Laurel. Normally she’d be fine with that, but it’s harder than she would’ve thought to hand files to Wes and have a serious discussion with him about their client with a baby in her lap, constantly demanding her attention and pulling on her hair.

Noticing her struggle, Michaela of all people holds out her arms and sighs, “Here, give him to me. I’ll hold him.”

Laurel almost does a double take. “You sure?”

“Please,” the other girl scoffs. “I’m great with kids.”

Hesitantly, she hands him over, and almost the instant Owen comes face-to-face with Michaela, he bursts into harsh, noisy sobs. It’s obvious that he’s scared of her, which makes sense to Laurel, because everyone is sort of scared of Michaela.   

Michaela’s eyes flicker with confusion, and she holds the baby at arm’s length, like she doesn’t know what to do with him. “What? What’d I do wrong?”

“For one, you can’t hold him like that,” Connor tells her, and takes Owen onto his lap instead. “Shh. Hey, don’t cry. Don’t worry, the mean lady’s gone now. I got you.”

In record time, Owen settles down, peering up at Connor with wide, watery eyes as the rest of the group look on in surprise – except for Michaela, who is glaring, furious at being bested yet again by him.

“What?” he shrugs, noticing their perplexed stares. “My sister has kids. I watch them a lot during the holidays.”

They go back to work not long after, rotating Owen from person to person (excluding Michaela) every once in a while. It ends up working rather well, and Laurel comes to find out that Connor isn’t the only one who is good with Owen. Wes is all right, she guesses, just letting him sit quietly on his lap, but seems like he doesn’t really know what to do.

No, shockingly enough, the one Owen really takes a liking to is Asher. Frank hadn’t nicknamed him Doucheface for nothing, and Owen laughs harder than she’s ever heard at the faces Asher pulls for his amusement. It makes Laurel dislike him a little less, if only for a few minutes.

“You know what?” Asher remarks. “I’m not a huge fan of babies, but this one is freaking awesome! His sense of humor is way more advanced than all you losers. He already gets how hilarious I am.”

“Well, it makes perfect sense,” Connor jeers. “Seeing as your sense of humor’s always been infantile.”

Asher makes a face at him, eliciting another hysterical laugh from Owen. “You’re just jealous he likes me better.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Michaela grumbles and holds out her arms again. “Give him to me. It’s my turn.”

“You really think that’s a good idea? After… last time?” Wes frowns.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be fine. Now come on.”

Asher passes him into Michaela’s waiting arms, and luckily, Owen doesn’t cry this time, though he does eye Michaela with a noticeable look of terror on his pudgy face. Michaela giggles – a grating, forced sound – and reaches down to tickle his belly.

Owen doesn’t laugh. If anything, he only looks more frightened.

That doesn't deter Michaela, however. “You’re so adorable, aren’t you? Say hi to your Auntie Michaela! Can you say hi? Hi?”

Laurel hears someone scoff behind her, and she turns to find Frank standing there with two mugs of coffee in his hands. “You’re tryin' too hard.”

“Yo, Frankie D,” Asher calls out. “Your kid’s an absolute bro.”

“’Course he is. Like father like son,” Frank shrugs and holds out one of the cups to Laurel, which she takes with a smile and sips from gratefully.

Connor notices, and raises an eyebrow. “Do we get coffee too?”

“Sure,” Frank shoots back. “Get it yourself.”

The resulting silence is thick and uncomfortable, and seems to last forever – that is, until a sudden scream sounds out from the couch and makes everyone jump. They turn toward the origin of the shriek, and find Michaela sitting there, covered in vomit and holding Owen out as if getting ready to toss him away from her.

“Oh my God!” she cries. “Oh my _God_ , ew!”

“Oh, man!” Asher pumps his fist. “If I didn’t already love that baby, I so do now!”

Frank sets down his coffee mug and rushes over to snatch him away. “Hey, hey. Don’t do that. That’s bad. Bad, buddy.”

He’s trying to be firm, but Laurel can see the corners of his mouth twitching up into a smile. She doesn’t catch her own laugh in time, and when Michaela hears, Laurel can almost see the steam coming out of her ears.

“This is not _funny_!” she hisses. “Y-you should be disciplining him! I – _ugh_!”

“How you think she’s gonna discipline him, Michaela?” Connor chuckles. “He’s a baby. Babies do that kind of stuff all the time.”

Laurel and Frank step into the next room, out of earshot of the rest of the group, and as soon as he knows it’s safe, Frank whispers into Owen’s ear, “That’s my boy. Good aim.”

Laurel laughs again, glancing back at Michaela. “She’s not exactly mom material, is she?”

“I hope to God she never has kids,” he shakes his head.

Laurel can’t help agree. Any child of Michaela’s will almost certainly end up a nervous wreck.

Annalise and Bonnie choose that oh-so-convenient moment to walk in the front door, and when Annalise takes in the chaotic scene in the living room, with papers strewn everywhere and Michaela frantically trying to clean herself off with tissues while hyperventilating, she scowls.

“What the hell is going on here?” she asks the group, her eyes flitting to every person in search of an answer.

Finally, Frank steps forward to offer one. “Owen hurled on Prom Queen. It’s fine. I got it all under control.”

“This is under control to you?” Annalise demands, but surprisingly enough spares them the lecture. “Miss Pratt, go clean yourself off. Hurry up. We’re meeting with our new client at her office in half an hour.”

After collecting their things – and, on Michaela’s part, scrubbing the puke off herself as best she can – they pile into Frank and Annalise’s cars and head downtown. Their client is a woman in charge of one of the largest non-profits in Philadelphia, accused of using the charity’s money to fund her extravagant lifestyle; a charge that, after meeting her and seeing the designer brands she piles on herself, doesn’t seem too farfetched to Laurel. While Annalise meets privately with their client, one of the woman’s assistants takes them on a tour of the charity’s gigantic headquarters, down hallways with immaculately polished marble floors and large windows that look out onto the city’s skyline.

At some point, Frank hands Owen off to Connor, as he disappears to consult with Bonnie and Annalise on something. Laurel, who had been busy mingling with some of the employees and discreetly trying to gather information, barely even notices, but when they regroup in the lobby while Annalise is still off with their client, she starts to have the unsettling feeling that something is missing.

And then, she realizes what – or _who_ – it is.

“Frank?” she asks nervously. “Where’s Owen?”

He furrows his brow. “Gave him to Hair Gel. Why?”

Everyone’s eyes fly to Connor, who is tapping away on his phone while walking back over to the group, and very obviously does _not_ have Owen.

She hurries up to him. “Connor? What’d you do with Owen?”

“I left him with Asher,” he answers. Everyone in the group exchanges worried glances at this new development, even Bonnie.

Frank storms over as well, just as panicked as Laurel and increasingly furious. “You left him with _Doucheface_?”

“Yeah. What? I had to use the restroom. And he seems like he likes him.”

They spot Asher sitting on a bench in the hallway by the restrooms, scrolling through his phone, and all but sprint over to him.

“Where the hell is he?” Frank demands, raising himself to his full, terrifying height.  

Asher looks up from his phone and blinks. “Who?”

“Owen,” Laurel breathes. She’s trying to remain calm, but the clueless look on Asher’s face is making her fear the worst. “Connor said you have him.”

Asher’s face undergoes a lightning-quick series of changes: from confusion, to understanding, shock, and then fear, in that order.

"Oh," he finally says, paling. "Crap."


	8. Chapter 8

Everyone stares at Asher in disbelief for a moment, genuinely baffled.

“How the hell do you lose a _baby_?” Michaela is the first to ask the question on everyone’s mind.

“Are you serious?” Frank raises his voice, livid. Unconsciously, he balls his hands into fists at his sides. “You lost my fucking _kid_ , man?”

“This is a new one,” Connor shakes his head. “Even for you.”

Frank wants to wring the kid’s neck. He really does. Hell, if somebody doesn’t stop him, he probably will. “I swear to God, Doucheface, you’re fucking dead-“

“Stop it!” Laurel steps in between the two men, then looks to Asher. “Just _calm down_. Where was the last place you know for sure you had him?”

“Uh…” Asher’s forehead creases in concentration. “The thirteenth floor. Or… the third. Or – no! Wait! Maybe the tenth?” Frank lunges toward him again, and only stops when Laurel places a hand on his chest to push him back. Asher looks about two seconds away from peeing himself. “I don’t know! We were on a lot of floors!”

“Are you stupid?” Michaela spits. “Like actually, legally, quantifiably stupid?”

“This is unbelievable,” Connor remarks. “I can’t – I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Let’s not freak out, okay?” Laurel urges. “Connor and Michaela, you guys look on the first three floors. Wes, you get the next two. Bonnie and Asher, you go to six through nine. Frank and I’ll get the last four. If anyone finds Owen, call Frank. Got it?”

Everyone nods, and, with the responsibilities divvied up, they go their separate ways.

Laurel and Frank start on the tenth floor and work their way up, frantically dashing up to every person they see and showing them a picture of Owen on his phone. But no one seems to have seen him, and as they reach the end of the twelfth floor with only one left to go, Frank starts to grow more and more distraught. Owen’s gone, God knows where. He’s pissed at Doucheface for that, sure, but more than anything he’s pissed at himself for being a shitty excuse for a father, because, really, what kind of dad can’t even keep track of his own goddamn child?

After what feels like the thousandth ‘no,’ Frank roars in frustration and storms away, stepping over to the elevator and practically punching the button to call it. “God dammit.”

“Frank,” Laurel lowers her voice and reaches out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay-“

“It’s not fucking okay!” he snaps. “For all we know he could be long gone by now, abducted by some whacko or something. I said I wasn’t gonna screw this up, and I did. What the fuck was I thinking, leaving him with Hair Gel? What the fuck was I thinking when I thought I could take care of a kid-“

“Hey!” she interrupts him, placing both hands on his cheeks to force him to look at her. “Look at me.”

It takes a moment, but finally he relents and meets her eyes. She sucks in a deep breath. “It’s gonna be all right.”

Frank doesn’t answer at first, just stares at her and moves his mouth without articulating any words, before he sighs and releases the tension in his shoulders, deflating all at once like a balloon. One look at Laurel is all it takes, and all the panic drains out of him at once. For the millionth time in two months he doesn’t know what the hell he’d do without her. She’s the only one keeping a level head here, while he’s just a useless bundle of frayed nerves.

“I’m scared as hell,” he admits. She tries to force a smile for his sake, but it ends up looking more like a grimace.

“I know. I am, too. We’ll find him.” Laurel pauses and manages a dry chuckle. “Besides, Owen’s _your_ son. If he’s anything like you-“

The shrill ringing of a cellphone cuts Laurel off mid-thought. Her mouth falls shut, and when Frank realizes that it’s coming from his pocket, he freezes.

He’s too shocked to remember to move, until she nudges him none-too-gently on the shoulder. “Come on! Answer it!”

Hastily, Frank shoves his hand into his pocket, fumbles for his phone, and brings it up to his ear.

“Hello?”

 

\--

 

They’re out of the elevator doors as soon as they open, sprinting back into the crowded lobby. Bonnie’s phone call had been brief and to the point: _We found him. Come to the lobby_. Frank all but shoves a man out of his way, sending him tumbling to the ground. He doesn’t even spare him a glance, though he hears Laurel stop and apologize for his sake. At last, they reach the corner in which the Keating Five and Bonnie have congregated – and there Owen is, bouncing on Bonnie’s hip with a smile on his face.

Frank takes him into his arms almost immediately, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Thank Christ. Where was he?”

“We asked around and found out there’s a daycare for employees’ kids on the seventh floor,” Bonnie explains. “Someone must’ve found him crawling around and dropped him off there.”

Frank lets out the breath he’s been holding for the last half an hour. “You all right, bud? I got you now. I love you so much. Don’t ever forget that.”

“We missed you,” Laurel reaches up and strokes his little cheek. “We’re not letting you out of our sight ever again, okay? Never ever _ever_.”

They fawn over him for a moment longer, until Asher steps up and awkwardly clears his throat. “So… We, uh, we cool now, Frankie D?”

Frank’s eyes darken dangerously, but he doesn’t make a move toward him, for Owen’s sake. When he speaks his voice is low, and filled with quiet fury that is twice as frightening as it would’ve been had he just shouted instead.

“You lose my son like he’s some kinda toy, and now you wanna know if we’re _cool_?” Asher audibly gulps. Frank narrows his eyes. “Nah. We aren’t cool. Sleep with one eye open, asswipe.”

Satisfied, he watches as Asher slinks away to the back of the group, doing his best to hide himself behind Connor and Wes. After Annalise returns and they start to make their way back to the cars, he makes a point of walking right behind Doucheface to keep him continually looking over his shoulder.

He isn’t going to actually retaliate, of course, but he does enjoy scaring the hell out of the kid.

They spend the rest of the day at the office prepping for trial, and he stays late with Laurel after everyone else has left for the night, sorting through the Mount Everest-sized piles of paperwork. At some point she wanders out of the room with Owen, and when he starts preparing to leave, he goes to find her, drawn to the kitchen by the faint sound of voices.

Laurel isn’t there, however. Instead, it’s Annalise, sitting at the table with Owen on her lap and smiling. It takes him aback at first, and he blinks, because in all the years he’s known Annalise, he could probably count on one hand how many times he’s seen her smile – really _smile_.

He should take a picture. Laurel will never believe him.

Frank stands back and watches her play with him for a while, before stepping forward. “Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to let him get in your way.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind,” she says. “He looks just like you, doesn’t he?”

“Same eyes and everything,” he nods, taking a seat across from her. “Still kinda freaks me out sometimes.”

“We’ve known each other a long time. More than ten years. I never thought I’d live to see the day you settled down.”

_Settled down_. Even though he knows it’s probably true, those words still sort of make him sweat.

“Yeah. Me either,” is all he says.

“I wish I had parenting advice to give you. I’d always wanted a child. Not two or three – just one. We tried for so many years, me and Sam. But after all the miscarriages…” she drifts off, pursing her lips. “I figured it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Yeah, well, you can be his godmother.” Annalise raises her eyebrows in surprise, and he shrugs. “Why not? You’d be good at it.”

They are silent for a moment, before she asks pointedly, “You’re seeing Miss Castillo?”

“Yeah.” Frank doesn’t seen much of a point in lying to Annalise now, when it’s clear she knows the truth, and so he nods. “She’s good for me, Annalise. And him.”

“I should give you the same lecture I’ve given you a hundred times,” Annalise sighs, “but in the interests of not sounding like a broken record… I’ll look the other way, this time. Keep it professional at work, or we’ll have a problem.”

“You got it. It won’t be any trouble.”

“I’m proud of you for stepping up,” she meets his eyes, speaking like a mother to her son. She gets to her feet and hands Owen off to him. “All boys need a father to look up to. Be that man for him.”

He looks down at Owen, whose eyelids are droopy with sleep, and nods. “I will. I promise.”

After locating Laurel and leaving for the night, they pile into his car, and he turns the key in the ignition to start it. Owen has fallen asleep in his car seat behind them, and Laurel looks like she might just do the same, leaning her head against the passenger side window and struggling to keep her eyes open.

“What was that about?” she asks with a yawn. “With Annalise?”

“She knows about us,” Frank mentions casually. Her eyes snap open in surprise.

“What? A-are you serious? Frank-”

“Relax. As long as we can keep it professional at the office, we’re good.”

“And you think you can? Keep it professional at the office?” Laurel looks skeptical.

He reaches over and places a hand on her knee with a wink. “Well, you do make it hard sometimes, babe.”

“Cut it out,” she rolls her eyes with a smile. “You’re an animal.”

He leans over and presses a kiss to the back of her hand, momentarily taking his eyes off the road. Laurel pulls away, however, and points ahead. “And keep your eyes on the road. There’s a baby on board. You have to become a better driver.”

“Yes ma’am,” he mock salutes her, returning his eyes to the road.

Laurel tries to glare at him, but just ends up grinning with a happy sigh. “I could get used to this.”

“To what?”

“To being with you,” she says softly. “To… us.”

For a split second he glances sideways at Laurel, taking in the sight of her without a word. Her eyelids are heavy with sleep, her hair piled into a sloppy bun on the top of her head. The streetlights dance across her face in stripes of yellow and orange as they drive. This time it takes a great deal of effort to make himself look back at the road; if he didn’t have to, he’d never stop staring at her.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I could, too.” _I already have._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter, so things are drawing to a close! I hope you're all still along for the ride ;)

“You have to stop swearing around him. Seriously.”

Laurel glares down at Frank, who is crouched on the kitchen floor near Owen’s highchair, cleaning up the dish of food he’d spilled. It’s early in the morning, and they’re getting ready in a flurry of tying ties and brushing teeth and spooning baby food into Owen’s mouth, like always.

“It’s fine, babe,” he mutters. “He’s gonna hear it sooner or later.”

“He’s a baby, Frank. Do you _want_ his first word to be profane?” she scoffs, grabbing an empty plastic container that’d once held some kind of food and setting it on the counter. “We’re starting a swear jar. One dollar per bad word, for both of us. We need to break the habit.”

“’Bad word?’” he echoes. “What, are we in kindergarten now?”

Laurel doesn’t answer. She just holds out her hand expectantly, and he rolls his eyes, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and muttering, “Dammit.”

“That’s two.”

Frank glares at her, but fishes two dollars out anyway, which she deposits in the makeshift jar with a grin. “Your wallet’s going to be empty before the end of the day.”  

“No way,” he shakes his head, kneeling and wiping off Owen’s mouth. “You’re just as bad as I am.”

Laurel rolls her eyes and is about to open her mouth to reply when she steps on one of Owen’s toys that had, somehow, made its way all the way into the kitchen. She steps back, and hisses under her breath, “ _Shit_.”

“That’s a dollar,” he is quick to remind her, with an infuriating smirk on his face.

“I don’t… That doesn’t…” she sighs and reaches for her purse. “Whatever. Here. Are you happy now?”

“Very. It’s on.”

“This isn’t a competition,” she reminds him. “This is for Owen’s benefit.”

“I know,” he shrugs. “It’s still on.”

By the end of the day, Laurel doesn’t owe another cent, and Frank is exactly twenty-three dollars poorer – not that she’s keeping track or anything. But it doesn’t even really seem to be helping, because he curses in front of Owen once again after dinner, and glowers at her as he reaches into his wallet for the twenty-fourth time that day.

“How much money are you going to lose before you stop that?” she chides him.

“Probably a lot. This is ridiculous.”

“ _This_ is ridiculous?” she exclaims. “What’s _ridiculous_ is the fact that you can’t set a good example for your son! He’ll go around daycare saying ‘fuck,’ if we teach him it’s okay to!”

A tiny voice behind them makes her freeze all at once. “Fuck.”

Her eyes widen, and she turns – and there’s Owen, looking up at them from the play mat in the living room with a proud smile on his face. That was his first word. _His first word_.

She’d taught him his first word and of all the things it could be it’s _fuck_.  

“Fuck,” he repeats. Laurel gulps.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Frank!” She hears Frank laughing, and she spins around, furious. “Don’t laugh, this is a _disaster_!”

“You’ve done it now. I think you owe about…” he pretends to think. “A million bucks in the swear jar.”

She groans and hurries over to where Owen sits, on the little play mat in the living room. “No, no, no, no. Hey, Owen, don’t say that. It’s a-“

“Fuck!” he says again, his little eyes twinkling. Laurel sighs and runs a frantic hand through her hair.

“Well,” Frank chimes in from across the room, where he stands drying the dishes, “at least we know for sure he’s mine, if that’s his first word.”

“W-what do we do?” she stammers. “Frank, how do we fix this?”

“We? You’re the one who did it.” She glares at him, and he shrugs rather uselessly, turning back to the sink. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

 

\--

 

“Can you say truck? Trucks go _vroom vroom_.”

“Fuck!”

“No, no, no. _Truck_. How about duck, Owen? _Duck_? They go _quack_ -“

“Fuck!”

Laurel sighs. “What about _cluck_? Like a chicken? You know what sound chickens make, don’t you? _Cluck cluck_.”

“Fuck!”

She groans and buries her head in her hands. Frank, who had been watching in silence from the kitchen, chuckles. “Not having much luck, huh?”

“That’s it. I’ve scarred him for life,” she laments, taking him into her lap. “What’re we going to tell him when he’s older a-and he asks about his first word?”

“We’ll lie to him. Tell him it was something else,” Frank says, as takes a seat on the couch beside her and holds out his arms. “Here.”

She hands him over with another dejected sigh, and Frank settles the baby on his lap, speaking gently but firmly.

“Hey, big guy. No more saying that word anymore, okay? Let’s learn another one.” Owen doesn’t react, just stares up at him intently as he listens. Frank stops to think, then continues, “See that pretty lady over there? She’s your mama. Can you say that? Mama. Ma. Ma.”

“Ma,” he starts, pauses, and then, with Frank’s encouragement, finishes, “Ma… ma.”

Laurel’s heart stops for an instant. Frank passes him to her, and when they come face-to-face he says it again, reaching out to grab ahold of her hair with clumsy fingers. Happy tears come to her eyes, though she blinks them back. She should probably be freaking out, and, well, she kind of is; here she is, twenty-four, still in school, taking on the responsibility of raising a baby and being a mother to him. This isn’t a situation she can just up and ditch if things get too hard. It seems so immense, the thought of raising a child, but she suddenly she realizes that she wants to be there for every moment anyway, every smile and word and laugh. All of it.

“That’s right,” she plants a kiss on his head and nuzzles her nose against his. “I’m your mama.”

Later that night, after they’ve put Owen down and gone to bed, she rolls over and looks at Frank, who had been scrolling through his phone absentmindedly. He notices the contemplative expression on her face and switches it off, setting it on the bedside table.

“What?” he asks.

Laurel scoots closer, resting an arm on his chest. “When Owen said mama… it got me thinking that…” she drifts off for a moment. “Well, I wanna be in this with you. For the long run.”

Frank shifts to face her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “I mean, I had a nanny who was pretty much my mom, and she was great, but… I never felt like I could go to her with anything. Like I ever had parents I could really _talk_ to. I-I want him to have that.”

“So what? You gonna stay with me just because of my kid?” he teases.

She grins. “Well, you’re an added bonus.”

“We’re gonna be kickass parents, y’know. I’ll teach him how to do everything. Walk. Play ball. Get with girls.”

“Yeah, okay, but go easy on that last one. We don’t want him turning out too much like you.”

He pretends to be offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs, not missing a beat. “You can be kind of an asshole sometimes. If you teach him how to get with girls, teach him to respect them, not just… hit it and quit it.”

“I’m not much of an expert in that department.” She gives him a look, and quickly he relents. “Okay. I'll teach him that, too.”

“And I’ll teach him to be a gentleman – and that it’s okay to be vulnerable. That he doesn’t need to act like a tough guy to be a man.”

Frank raises his eyebrows. “He’s gonna be one hell of a kid.”

“Of course he will,” she says, like it should be obvious. “He’s got us as parents.”

“Yeah, but you as a mom especially. You’re gonna be fucking incredible at it.”

She blushes. “You won’t be half-bad yourself.”

He opens his arms, letting her settle in against his chest. “Just promise me one thing, babe.”

“What?”

“If you teach him any more words, try not to make them obscenities.”

That earns him a light smack on the chest from Laurel. Frank chuckles, and reaches over to turn off the light, bathing them in darkness.

 

\--

 

At the end of March, spring break commences. Middleton’s campus empties out as the students flock in herds to the Jersey Shore for binge drinking, drugs, sex, and all other kinds of debauchery.

Laurel stays in town, though Frank had made it clear that if she wanted to go, she should. And she would, if she wanted to – but she doesn’t. She tends to avoid wild parties in general, and spending a week getting blackout drunk and felt up by strangers doesn’t sound all that appealing to her. She’s more than content to stay home with Frank and Owen in the peace and quiet, escaping from the insanity of working for Annalise for a while.

Being with them is carefree, easy. She loves Owen like he’s her own. Her parents would probably say it’s too much for her to take on, caring for a baby that isn’t even hers while going through law school – and maybe they’d be right, but she doesn’t care. Not once in her life has she ever felt like she’s home, not at Brown, not even back at her actual home with her parents in Palm Beach. But Frank… He feels like home to her, like she’s found in his arms the tiny little corner of the world where she belongs.

On the first of April, he tells her he loves her for the first time.

It’s April Fool’s Day, and though Laurel almost never goes out of her way to intentionally screw with people, she’d grown up pranking her siblings on the first of the month; a habit that had kind of followed her into adulthood.

The idea had come to her a few nights ago.

She’s more than aware of Frank’s affinity for gelling his hair; in fact, she thinks it’s a bit ridiculous that he’d nicknamed Connor ‘Hair Gel’ when Frank uses double – if not triple – the amount he ever does. So she buys a tube of temporary pink hair dye at a convenience store, and replaces his hair gel with it, going to bed that night with a smile on her face. Being the adept prankster she is, she doesn’t give him any reason to be suspicious, though when they start to go for their customary early-morning, half-awake roll in the sheets the next day, she can’t stop laughing at the thought of what awaits him after his shower.

Frank stops kissing her neck and looks up, annoyed. “Glad to hear I’m entertaining you.”

“Sorry,” she giggles. “Sorry. Keep going.”

He does, and then stops again a minute later, when she starts to laugh again. “You’re really killing the mood here.”

Frank rolls off of her and gets to his feet, ignoring her attempts to urge him back into bed. “Come on, just come back.”

“Can’t. I’m gonna be late. You wanna shower first?”

There’s her opportunity. Laurel shakes her head, biting her tongue to keep from grinning. “No. You go ahead.”

Frank disappears into the bathroom, and she waits with a wicked grin on her face to hear the hiss of the water cut off. Eventually it does, and he steps out, doubtlessly over to the mirror to do whatever beard maintenance he needs and slick back his hair. She waits for it, and waits for it, and then, finally, a quiet, bewildered ‘ _What the fuck_?’ floats out to where she sits on the bed.

“What the fuck?” he says again, louder this time. There’s a pause, during which he probably realizes who the culprit is, and then he growls. “Fucking hell, Laurel!”

He appears in the bathroom doorway, shirtless in only a towel, with streaks of pink in his hair and the tube she’d tampered with in his hand. A laugh escapes her before she can stifle it, and she clamps her hand over her mouth. He looks ridiculous, and also really pissed, and it makes her laugh even harder.

“What the hell was that for?” he demands.

Through her laughter, she manages to choke out, “April Fools!”

Frank stares at her for a long moment, his facial expression somewhere in between ticked and surprised and amused.

She can practically feel the anger flow out of him, but he keeps on frowning. “Never mess with a man’s hair gel. That’s like a golden rule.”

“I guess I should’ve known. You spend more time getting ready in the mornings than I do,” she retorts with a smirk, getting to her feet and walking over to where he stands.

He scowls, but doesn’t deny it, because she knows as well as he does that it’s absolutely true. She laughs again when he pulls her into his arms, raises an eyebrow, and finally gives in, chuckling. “Oh, this is funny to you, is it?”

“Yes,” she nods, and leans in to peck him on the lips. “I have to say, it’s a good look on you.”

He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, and they both laugh when it comes away bright pink.

“This isn’t over,” he tries to sound intimidating, but she sees right through him. “Watch your back.”

Laurel gives him a doubtful look. “Do your worst.”

“At least tell me this comes out easily. No way in hell am I going to work like this.”

“Relax. It washes out after a shower. Or two. And,” she moves in closer, looking at him from underneath heavy lids. “Owen’s still asleep. I think… we just might have enough time for another shower.”

Giving a low sound of approval, he reaches down and squeezes her ass, dropping his towel seconds later and leading her into the bathroom.

She isn’t expected at work all week because of spring break, and so she spends the day with Owen while Frank heads off to the office. He gets home fairly late, and as soon he steps in the door she starts looking over her shoulder, waiting for his retaliation. As the hours grow later, though, Laurel starts to doubt that he’ll actually do anything – that is, until they’ve put Owen down for the night and they’re washing the dinner dishes together, and she opens one of his cupboards to put a stack of plates away.

Right in front of her, staring her right in the face, is what looks like the biggest roach she’s ever seen in her life.

She squeals and backs up immediately. “Frank! There’s a bug.”

“So? What do you want me to do about it?” he shrugs.

“Don’t be an asshole right now, I-“

Laurel feels something on her shoulder just then, and when she looks down she finds a similarly-sized roach there. She gasps, shrugging it off and backing up again – only to run into Frank, who had snuck up behind her. The ‘roach’ tumbles onto the floor, unmoving.

A realization dawns on her, and she turns to see him smirking. She only stares at him. “Plastic bugs? That’s the best you could do?”

“On short notice, yeah.” His hands go to her waist, pulling her close. “Give me a heads up next time. I’ll get you back.”

“You know I hate bugs,” she says, and hits him lightly on the arm with a laugh. “I hate you. I really do.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank replies smoothly. “I love you.”

All at once, she stills.

Her smile vanishes in seconds, and she almost pulls back in surprise. Is this the kind of ‘I love you’ people say without thinking, the kind they regret as soon as it comes out of their mouths? Is she hearing things? She doesn’t know, isn’t sure. Laurel has the sense for a moment that she is living another person’s life, that even her arms and legs are no longer under her control. It all feels like a dream, and yet Frank seems so real right in front of her, so honest, looking at her with those blue eyes of his and gripping her gently at the waist. He means it – that much is obvious. He means it so much that she can feel it in the weight of his gaze, in the tender, silent caresses of his eyes.

“A-are you going to say ‘April Fool’s,’ or something?” she blurts out without thinking.

He shakes his head slowly, leans in closer. “No.”

Laurel can’t seem to find the words to answer him, and so she just raises her face to his and kisses him deeply. She says with the kiss everything she can’t find the words for: _I love you too, I need you, I want to be with you._

She says those words with the kiss, and then when she breaks away she says them again – because suddenly, as if out of thin air, they come to her, begging to be freed: “I love you too.”

And then suddenly his lips are on her neck, planting hot, needy kisses, and he’s whispering ‘I love you, I love you’ across her skin – and she’s sure that she has died and gone to heaven.

 

\--

 

Laurel doesn’t go home for the summer.

Instead, she makes up an excuse for her parents, empties the rest of her things out of her apartment, and shows up at his doorstep with her bags in hand, there to stay.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the final chapter! I do, however, plan on writing more Flaurel fic in the very near future. I have a number of ideas, but if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop a comment here or message me on tumblr. I’d love to hear from you.  
> Thanks for reading!

**Two Years Later**

It’s commencement day.

A thousand black caps fly up into the sky, the tassels blowing in the breeze. The early summer sun is high, the weather unseasonably warm. Cheers erupt from the sea of students below. Laurel catches hers with a laugh, and, after migrating with the rest of the students onto a grassy area nearby, makes her way through the throng of people until she comes upon Frank, waiting on the outskirts of the crowd with Owen beside him.

“Hey,” she smiles from ear-to-ear, planting a quick kiss on his lips.

“Hey. Congrats,” he says. “I’m proud of you.”

She beams. The engagement ring on her finger catches the sunlight, and glimmers.

Frank had proposed on Christmas, in front of the tree with a simple diamond ring in a black velvet box – cliché, but everything she’d ever hoped it would be. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise to her, in all honesty; it just had solidified the commitment she’d already made to being with him, forever – and so she’d said yes. She couldn’t have imagined saying anything else.

Laurel feels an insistent tug on her gown from below, and she looks down to find Owen there, trying to get her attention. “Mommy!”

“Hey!” she reaches down and scoops him up into her arms, a feat that has gotten more and more challenging as he’s gotten older. “How’re you?”

“That was long,” he answers in his high-pitched little lisp, as he reaches out to play with the tassel on her cap. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she chuckles, kissing his cheek with an audible _mwah_. “What’s that in your hand?”

He holds out a yellow dandelion proudly. “’S for you.”

“I love it. I’ll put it right here behind my ear. See?”

She does just that, and Owen gives her a big, toothy smile. “You look even pwettier!”

“He’s quite the charmer,” she laughs again and glances over at Frank. “He must get that from you.”

Frank shrugs. “What can I say? He learned from the best.”

“Hey!” a familiar voice calls out behind her all of a sudden.

She turns, and finds Wes there, with Connor and Michaela trailing behind him, bickering about something or other. Asher is nearby, a dozen or so feet away, taking obnoxious selfies with his tongue sticking out. They’d all stayed surprisingly close after their first year working with Annalise, meeting up occasionally for study groups upon ending up in several of the same classes in their second and third years. Laurel doesn’t really know how, but the insanity of working for Professor Keating had bonded them in some weird way, despite their frequent assertions that they aren’t – and never were – friends.

Laurel sets Owen down to give Wes a hug, and immediately he goes running over to Asher, who notices, picks him up, and gives him a fist bump. “Yo little man! What’s up? Hey, Frankie D, you gotta let me come babysit for you sometime.”

Connor scoffs. “Remember that time you _lost_ him?”

“I was just a first-year, okay?” Asher rolls his eyes, as Owen laughs and smooshes his cheeks together. “I’m, like, so much more mature now than I was then. Besides, I can be the cool uncle! Give him his first joint and everything.”

Laurel looks to Frank, and finds him with a look of irritated disbelief on his face. “You really wanna talk about giving my three year-old weed in front of me?”

“Fine, okay, we’ll start small,” Asher corrects himself. “His first piece of candy.”

“If Asher’s babysitting, I am, too,” Michaela chimes in. Everyone gives her strange looks, and she rolls her eyes. “I need a lot of… practice, before Aiden and I have kids.”

Frank folds his arms. “Uh uh. Not happening. Either of you.”

She snaps a few pictures with Wes afterward, and even lets Michaela get her in on one, though she dodges Asher when he tries to pull her into his. They leave shortly after that, and head back to their two-bedroom apartment which they’d moved into the previous year, to accommodate Owen’s need for his own room and bed. At five on the dot, Bonnie arrives to babysit for the evening, as Frank had made dinner reservations to celebrate her graduation.

“Thanks for doing this, Bon,” Frank tells her as he slides on his suit jacket by the door. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

Bonnie smiles down at Owen and ruffles his hair. Over the years she, as well as Annalise, had become pretty much an aunt to him. Initially, she hadn’t hesitated to voice her disapproval of his relationship with Laurel, but when it’d become clear she was far more than just a student of the month, she’d warmed toward her, because “any girl that can make _Frank_ settle down has got to be someone really special.”

“I’ll be fine,” she answers. “And it’s no problem.”

“Thanks again,” Laurel gushes, smoothing down the front of her forest-green dress. “If there’s anything we can ever do for you…”

“Go. Have fun. Front row seats at the wedding, though. That’s all I ask.”

Frank nods and reaches for the door. “You got it.”

He takes her out to a romantic little place on 9th Street that serves authentic Italian food – “none of that fake-ass Olive Garden bullshit,” are his words exactly. Afterwards, they go for a walk in the cool summer night, strolling down the sidewalk hand-in-hand underneath the streetlights. He offers her his suit jacket to cover her bare arms, and she drapes it around her shoulders gratefully.

“You ever think…” he broaches the subject tentatively, “about giving Owen a little brother or sister?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” she giggles. Frank goes silent for a long moment, but Laurel isn’t quite ready to be done with this conversation now that he’s started it. “Okay. Say that we did. What would we name them?”

“For a boy?” he pauses to think. “Frank Jr.”

She blinks, a small smile playing at her lips. “Are you kidding?”

“What? Think of how badass that would sound. Frank Delfino the Second.”

“You’re not naming our son after yourself, okay? Definitely not. What about for a girl? Let’s see if you can do better.”

“Giovanna. Adriana. Mia. I don’t know. Something Italian.”

She hums her approval. “I like that. I do have one condition, though. If and when we have kids.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re the one who’s staying home.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“Remember that misogynistic rant you went on the first time we met? About girls like me quitting our jobs the second we get pregnant to stay home with the kids?”

“I always figured that would come back to bite me in the ass someday.” At that, Laurel scoffs. They make their way over to the curb where his car is parked, and Frank stops suddenly, placing his hands on her hips. “I’ll do it, though.”

She meets his eyes, incredulous. “Seriously?”

“If that’s what it takes, to have a family with you, then yeah. I’m down for it. I'll even get one of those baby backpack things. The whole nine yards.”

She leans in and kisses him, then pulls away, holding out her hand to admire the ring on her finger with a contented sigh. “Laurel Delfino.”

“God,” he moves closer and takes a deep breath of her into his lungs. “I fucking love how that sounds.”

“Well, I could always hyphenate,” she teases. “Be Laurel Castillo-Delfino.”

“Nah. Too many syllables. When you’re out there kicking ass in court, it’ll take the judge too long to say.”

“Good point,” she concedes.

They are silent for a brief, peaceful minute, as a breeze rolls through and tosses strands of hair in front of her face. He reaches out to tuck them behind her ear, and she smiles a smile so wide it feels like it’ll break her face in two.

“I want to do it. Have kids. Just two, though. Three’s my max, and we already have Owen.”

He grins. “Whatever you want.”

“I want to do it,” she repeats. “Maybe not next year or the year after that, but… someday.”

“Well babe,” Frank says, giving her hand a firm squeeze and leaning in to kiss her again, “someday's just fine with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m publishing this fic chapter by chapter as I write them, so words of encouragement/kudos are very much appreciated!  
> Find me on [tumblr](http://www.laurelcasfillo.tumblr.com)!


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